My name is Roxana Ursu and I was born and raised in Alba Iulia, Romania. I moved to UK 6 years ago, after graduating from high-school, with the aim of going to university here. When I moved to England, I did not plan to study Computer Science. I have always been good at mathematics and even programming seemed to come naturally to me. I chose Pascal Programming as one of my subjects in my final high-school exam, The National Bacalaureat Exam. However, at the time, I thought that programming is for guys. I wanted to study something along the lines of economics.
I have applied to 5 different economics related degrees, but I wasn’t sure that it is for me so I deferred for a year. It was probably the best decision I made at the time. In that year, I improved my English and learned more about Computer Science and how it is indispensable in every industry, how new it is and continuously evolving. Because of all these reasons, a year later, every degree I applied for was related to programming.
I ended up studying Joint Mathematics and Computer Science at Imperial College London, from where I graduated with a First. I did a summer internship with Morgan Stanley and because I liked it so much, I came back as a full time through the graduate program – application development stream.
I am now working with the lending business in Morgan Stanley, mainly focusing on a web application (UI AngularJS; server Java). I love the challenges I get to solve on daily basis and the fact that I am continuously learning new things.
I hope I get to inspire more girls to choose to study computer science and to let them know it is not just for boys.
