Thomas Ewan Borland (BSc Computing, 2021)

I’ve been fascinated with programming from a young age, so studying computing was the obvious choice for me. Programming is all about solving logical puzzles where there are many right answers, and I’ve always found it satisfying and rewarding.
When I joined Buckingham, I found the environment welcoming and had lots of fun meeting the other new freshers – some of whom were fellow computing students, but many were from other schools.

I got involved in several societies, especially the gaming and drama societies, which were a great deal of fun and an excellent way to socialise. I was also lucky enough to find a part time job at the student union bar which I found very enjoyable.

The lecturers were passionate about the subject and easy to interact with. Many of the modules were great fun and all were interesting. I very much enjoyed my final year project, which was to produce an animated data dashboard that rendered graphs with an extra time dimension. My two supervisors did a great job of encouraging and guiding me through developing the software and gave excellent feedback.

The latter half of my stay was overshadowed by the covid-19 pandemic. I found that lecturers adapted well to teaching online, and while I missed seeing everyone face to face the quality of education was impacted very little.

While I was nearing the end of my stay, one of my lecturers was able to pass my CV on to a couple of companies with links to the university. This led to two interviews, and I’m very pleased that one of these companies, Zizo, welcomed me as a junior consultant. I was given excellent advice going into the interviews by one of Buckingham’s careers advisors, which made me feel much more confident. I loved my time at Zizo and I’m very grateful to the University for helping me secure the role. I’d expected to be job searching for quite some time, so it was a relief to jump straight into working.

After a year at Zizo I moved to London and started a new role as a software engineer at Expect, a decarbonisation startup headed by Anand Verma, a former Buckingham Computing student whom I’d been introduced to by Harin, the dean of the faculty, at an alumni event. We’re now working together with a small team to develop an app that will assist companies in reducing their carbon footprint while remaining profitable. Currently I’m focused on rebuilding the front end of the app in React, to make it more responsive and maintainable. Working for Expect has been a dream come true, the team is wonderful and I’ve never been more motivated in my life!