Landon J. Mitchell

Master's in Computer Science

January 2018 - June 2019

GPA: 3.92

As an undergrad I took an intro to CS class. We programmed a little robot to explore its environment, stay within colored boundaries, and follow a path to a colored target on the floor. My professor encouraged me to major in CS. It was too late for undergrad, but I never gave up on the idea.

Even before then, I always had an interest. I tinkered with online Python courses. I taught myself the essentials of HTML and CSS just for fun. As a kid I used my Christmas money to buy our family's first 56k modem.

When the opportunity came, I took it. I moved to Chicago, took the GRE, applied, and enrolled. It's definitely been challenging at times, but I worked hard, and am proud of the success had.

Some of What I Studied

Bachelor's in Liberal Arts

August 2003 - May 2007

GPA: 3.72

As a recipient of the National Merit Award, I was offered a full-tuition scholarship, as well as a place in the school's AJ Gordon Scholars program. Mostly I looked forward to participating in the full-year study abroad program at the University of Oxford.

I entered college as a philosophy major. After a little time I fell in love with linguistics, and hoped to work with the school to carve out a path towards a degree in it, despite it not being officially offered. I even worked out a special arrangement to have an individual tutorial with the school's linguistics professor. I hoped to spend my year abroad in Oxford accumulating the necessary credits.

In the end the logistics of the specific custom degree in linguistics didn't quite work out. I completed my education with broad exposure to a variety of topics that had interested me, including the study of two different languages. My courses in Greek, in particular, involved deep textual analysis that helped develop my skills in analytical reasoning and research in a way that was both challenging and rewarding.

University of Oxford

I spent my Junior year at the University of Oxford as a part of a study-abroad progam. While there I had individual tutorials with university professors on topics including linguistics, discourse analysis, philosophy of language, and literary criticism.

Jerusalem University College

The summer before Junior year I participated in an intensive summer semster program hosted by Jerusalem University College. We toured ancient sites all over Israel and Jordan, with an emphasis on history and geography of the region, and how they were interrelated.

Chaparral High School

Way Back When

GPA: 4.? (who can remember?)

Back then, as now, I liked languages. I took four years of French and a year of Spanish. Senior year I took a few philosophy classes at the local community college.

Even in middle school I had already been studying a bit of classical Latin and Greek. Math was also a favorite subject.