Last First Day!

In my senior year of high school, the first day of school all the less nerdy and more socially inclined folks would post selfies and whatnot on their social media of choice with the caption “Last first day!!” commemorating their last first day back to school in high school. I thought it was a bit silly because being done with high school was more of a “Thank God” type of moment for me. However, I’ve found myself becoming sentimental about undergrad before even graduating, and all day today (my “last first day” of undergrad) I found myself looking back on my growth over the past 4 years, and what I wish I could’ve done differently.

Retrospective

Frankly, going into my freshman year I had no interest in the school I was going to. I went because it was the safe, local, and cheap option and saw it as no more than a discounted college degree. Initially I struggled mightily to find the motivation to go above and beyond in my studies. I would do the bear minimum to get by and shut myself away from my classmates. This put me into a spiral of not wanting to talk to anyone, not making friends early on because of it, then getting lonely. I would reason to myself that I would just transfer schools and everything would magically get better. I didn’t ever transfer nor did I make a change in my social life for quite awhile.

Along with this I struggled in my intro to data structures class which gave me the idea that I wasn’t good enough to be a CS major. This self-doubt coupled with the lack of a support system of friends or colleagues in CS caused me to switch majors to IT. This was possibly my worst mistake in my four years of undergrad. I was an IT major for my sophomore year and I was incredibly bored by the subject matter (No shade to IT majors).

Looking back, maybe switching to IT was good all along? As you’ll see, this was my turning point to becoming who I am today.

After being incredibly bored with IT but still feeling not good enough for CS, I found myself at a crossroads. Do I stick with the easy degree getter mentality and finish up IT, or do I grind my way through a CS degree and try my absolute hardest to earn a degree and job I’m passionate about. By phrasing alone I think you can guess the option I went with. The decision to switch back to CS was not an easy one, but seeing the alternative made me realize my passion for the subject and ignited a motivation I have never in my life felt before. This is what true passion feels like, and though I’ve stumbled on the way, I know this is my calling and I will do anything to make this happen.

I don’t solely attribute my newfound passion to my utter boredom in IT classes, but also to my lovely girlfriend. She is the absolute model student that any classroom would want, and truly has instilled in me a passion for learning I’ve never in my life had before. Because of her, I now look forward to each new semester and the classes I’m taking, eager to learn more about computing with each semester. With how anti-school I was as a kid, its incredible for me to be sad because I can’t take more computer science classes and that there’s classes I feel like I’m missing out on.

One last thing I can say also brought back my love for computer are some incredible computer science channels on YouTube. The programming / developer / computer science scene on YouTube can be some of the worst slop you’ve ever seen sometimes (I’m looking at you copy/paste JavaScript and AI fanboys) but there are some genuinely some incredible creators in the space that aren’t trying to sell a course or new JavaScript framework every month. I’ve linked some of my favorites below.

Sebastian Lague
Emergent Garden
javidx9
Computerphile

You guys are welcome for the free advertising, as if you need it…

Goals for My Last Semester

The motto for this semester is “Soak it all in”. This will likely be the last time I get to enjoy being on a college campus unless I find myself working at one. Genuinely, college campuses to me are some of the coolest areas we have in North America and I just love the general vibe of being in such a walkable, progressive, and welcoming space. This will also (likely) be the last time I get to be part of in-person lectures; so although I may be exhausted or uninterested at times I need to “soak it all in”.

As for some tangible goals I have, I’ve listed some below:

1. Survive Data Structures & Algorithms (Or as Dr. Kramer calls it, hell.)
2. Finish my capstone project without rushing at the last minute!!
   (Will be writing about this sooner or later)
3. Get a personal project done over Fall break.
4. Graduate (duh.)

It’ll be interesting to see which of these are actually fulfilled by the end of the semester, but no matter what happens, I’m just soaking it all in. Good luck to anyone else with classes this semester :)