I spent a year on the Hendon campus before King's would take the bet. Foundation computer science, north London, a technical institute that had grown into a university and still felt like a workshop. The three swords on the crest were on every letter I took home. That year was not glamorous. It was the proof I could sit in a lab, fail a problem set, and come back the next morning.

• Foundation Computer Science on the Hendon campus
• The year that unlocked the King's application
• Lab habits I still use when a build falls over

Five years on the Strand. Software engineering, AI, computer vision, computer graphics, internet systems. Nights in the Maughan reading room under that dome when a graphics assignment would not shade. In 2017 a King's hackathon team I was on took first place at Hack King's 4.0, Qualcomm Snapdragon. VR got under my skin here and never left. This is the degree I still write on forms, and the place I learned that a beautiful interface is worthless if the system behind it lies.

• BSc Computer Science, King's College London
• Hack King's 4.0, 1st place, Qualcomm Snapdragon (2017)
• AI, vision, graphics, and the VR itch that became a career thread

I took Zero To Mastery online from my place in Vancouver while I was job hunting. King's was a few years behind me and the computer science had gone rusty. Andrei's DSA course was how I sharpened it again, nights after applications, so a whiteboard would not catch me guessing. Not a second campus and not Toronto. A laptop in Canada, and a refusal to let the fundamentals fade while I looked for the next role.

• Data Structures and Algorithms, studied online from Vancouver
• A rust-removal pass before interviews, not a new degree
• Still the course I reopen when a graph or tree problem shows up