Declaring ignorance to what you love

Realizing that not knowing anything about what’s most important is the first step to loving it more.

For the last two years, I’ve considered myself a Computer Scientist. It’s been an incredibly journey, full of learning and exploration about something that I’m so passionate about, and I’ve really come to love it. But through it all, I’ve really come to understand that it’s absolutely impossible for one person to know it all, and that’s been such a hard thing for me to grasp.

All through High School, I was taught that I was something special. That I was smart, and on top of my game. But once I got to college, I realized that, at best, I was mediocre. I’ve never actually been something special. I’ve never really been “unique”, and my perception of smart was skewed by the people around me, which wasn’t anything in comparison to my peers at college. It was hard to get my head around. Really soaking in the thought that, essentially, everything I could feel comfort in about my personal skills was actually more of an illusion than a reality was terrifying. And that hit me hard my first year.

I failed calculus 2. I barely passed it the 2nd time around. And my calculus 1 grade wasn’t too much better, to be honest. I didn’t get it. I really couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doing good. To me now, it’s fairly obvious; I didn’t study enough, I procrastinated, and I just really didn’t apply myself to the fullest extent. And while, in the end, the only person I have to blame for that is myself, coming from a place where I didn’t have to apply myself at all to excel past my peers academically made that realization take longer then I wish it did. It was really sitting in the final exam for my first iteration of calculus 2 when it really started to dawn on me: College is hard, but that’s what makes it worthwhile.

That realization might seem fairly simple to a lot of people. I mean, they always say “it’s not the destination, but the journey”, but it really doesn’t hit home until you’re in a situation where that has context. College is a journey, definitely so. And the destination is the real world. College is the last gateway between us and our future, and it has to prepare us for that, which isn’t easy, and rightfully so. The real world is hard. There’s a lot of responsibilities that we must hold ourselves accountable to. High school doesn’t teach us how to behave and react outside of high school, because it really can’t. But really, what can? I’m still fairly convinced that not many thing can actually prepare us for the real world, besides actually getting out and living in it.

College has been able to teach me many things about myself so far. The type of people I like to hang out with, the things I like to do in my free time, the type of place I think I want to live, but most importantly, it’s taught me how to be passionate and love something. Coming into to college, I had no experience in the field of Computer Science. No prior classes, no previous exposure, no background knowledge. All I knew was that I liked computers, and I wanted to do something with them for my career. I didn’t even know if I would actually like it, or even be remotely good at it. My first semester of college was wonderful, in those regards. I loved it. I learned that, at least for me, computing is wonderful, and programming is just… a blast.

I attended a Hackathon my first semester, right towards the end of the year. The event was huge; hundreds of people, tons of teams, lots of free food and drinks, and here I was, with less then one complete semester in my pocket and the concepts of one single language in my programming toolbelt. I had no intention to go, the event itself was terrifying to me. But I was hanging out with a few friends I had made, and they were going, and encouraged me to go with them. In 24 hours, I learned how to make a website, write some basic PHP, do some simple SQL stuff, a bit of javascript, and other web-stack fundamentals. In just 24 hours, not only had I learned essentially five new languages, but I also came out of it all with something to show for it. We powered through and made an app. That was mind blowing to me. I had no idea what I was doing and I was able to make something that people could use. And that’s really when it started to set in. My affirmation that I made the right choice.

I have no idea what I can do, and I have no idea what I can’t. Computer Science is a massive field and there will always be something to learn. But the thing that makes it so special is that there always will be something more for me to learn. With a field that grows as fast as ours, staying on top of everything is nearly impossible, and that’s what makes it fun. Knowing that I can do anything and there will still be someone new. Which has really helped me shape my goals going forward. I’ve set for myself these challenges, missions even, that I try my hardest to follow every day. That I should always strive for challenges I know I’m not ready to handle. That I should never accept a problem is too difficult to solve or accept defeat because I don’t know what I’m doing. Because it’s in those moments when I’ve found I grow the most. When I don’t know what I’m doing and I figure it out anyway. Determination is the only thing stopping me from growing. And I refuse to let me be my own hinderance.

Today, I am through two years of school. Roughly a quarter of the way through the next. I’ve been writing this over the course of 6 months and each time I revisit this I’ve learned a bit more about myself. I worked at Facebook over the summer, and next summer I will be going back. Which lets me know that I did something right. And I’d like to believe it’s keeping that flame alive. The desire to keep growing and continuously challenging myself. And time and time again, I really see it to be true. Talking with freshman, you can tell who’s got that spark, because they’ve covered in things they might not understand and they love it. You know that those people will do great things. A lot of people say that we should be more comfortable with being uncomfortable, and I really stand behind that. Because we grow when we’re uncomfortable, and it’s when we grow that we make a difference. No matter how small it may be.

I love where I am because I know I have a journey ahead of me. Though I’m more than halfway through with college, I know that I have a lot of learning to go. Hopefully it never stops. Because I know now that I have the possibility to make a difference, I just don’t know what it will be or by what means it will happen. I just feel an obligation to make a positive change on the world, if even just for one person. I just have to figure how how.