CSC290 Blog 0: Introductions
It will always feel stunted and awkward to read introductions like this one. They’re overly long, they never have a strong message, and the writer always seems pretentious when they try to seem intelligent and self aware by acknowledging the flaws in the format. Yet it still feels a little forward to jump straight in, so, my name is Daniel, I’m a computer science student, I’m an Australian immigrant, and my blood type is A+.
This blog is a requirement for my CSC290 writing credit, (not sure how you got here if you were unaware), so topics will largely consist of what is given to me in that class. As an undergraduate with no real world experience, I can confidently offer expertise on several topics. More honestly, I like to consider myself a decent programmer, having used Python and Java extensively. My hobbies include playing guitar, Olympic style archery, and getting really excited for side projects I never finish. Case in point: the from-scratch neural network I built in Java that promptly stopped being developed when I realized that back-propagation is actually not that easy to understand.
While I am an inexperienced programmer the one thing that I feel qualified to tell you is not to underestimate the power of perseverance. With enough effort, time, and internet access one can do just about anything these days, and I say that as someone who has learned to do all manner of things, albeit really slowly. Through introspection one can pinpoint what needs to be improved, and through the internet one can usually find someone who has had the same issue before. This applies to learning a programming language, an instrument, throwing playing cards, any number of skills, useful or not. The key to this is perseverance and intelligence. What you lack in direction (due to the lack of an instructor) must be made up for through smart observance. Look at your technique, and try to truly understand the mechanics of what it should be, and why its different. It seems inane to say, but so many of us struggle to find direction when something doesn’t work(including me, look at those side projects I may never finish), even if they are able to find the problem they have.
I want to bring your focus back to a statement I made in this blog’s opening paragraph. “… [introductions] never have a strong message”. Why is that? I believe it is because the concept of spending 600 words talking about oneself is foreign to many. What on earth could the audience possibly need to know? When looking at yourself it is very difficult to understand what is interesting, when you’ve been living with yourself all your life. One can just pick somewhere to start writing and end up with a meandering, self aware piece, as you could argue I have, but the smarter thing to do would be to create a framing device. What wisdom can you impart on your audience? How can you demonstrate that with your life’s story? One can use that, and if that wisdom is about your way to meander your way to success through perseverance, then your writing is now impervious to critique. That, or it seems so pretentious that it wraps around to being bad again. Either way, you have certainly written an introduction, and no one can take that away from you.
