Stumbling Into Success

05 Sep 2019

Becoming a Computer Science Major

Lockers

In high school, I felt really lost. I wasn’t sure what I wanted out of life yet, and my initial plan was to become an accountant. I heard that they made a decent amount of money, and that was my main concern at the time. There was nothing in my life that I really considered to be my passion. I didn’t really mind; it just meant that I didn’t experience enough of life yet, which is normal for somebody who had only been alive for 16 years.

As I was signing for the classes I wanted to take in junior year, I noticed that they were offering a Computer Science class. The school had never offered this class before, so it had caught my eye. I had a little experience programming in the past, but I had never taken a real dive into the field. I was intrigued, and decided that I wanted to take the class, just to see how things would go. I had no idea how deep this rabbit hole was going to be, and I certainly wasn’t prepared for the journey it was going to take me on.

Computer Programming

Junior year came, I took the class for a year, and I had loved every second of it. I still can’t fully describe what I like about the class, but I throughly enjoyed every assignment we did in the class, and I was ready to take more. The next year, they were going to offer an AP Computer Science class, so I signed up for that class without hesitation. Senior year came and went in a very similar fashion to Junior year. I took the class, and I wanted to learn more. So the obvious decision for me when it came time to pick a major was Computer Science.

Computer Science in College

I was nervous for my first college class in the Fall of 2018, but what made it worse was that my first class was ICS 211. Even though I had recieved a 5/5 on the AP Computer Science exam, I felt like a fraud. I didn’t feel like I was supposed to be in a class with people a year older than me. During the college orientation at University of Hawaii at Manoa, I had met some people who had been programming since they were in middle school. They had a grasp of concepts that I had barely heard of. The sea of knowledge that some people seemed to have made what I knew and what I had accomplished felt insignificant.

All these thoughts were racing through my head as another student gave a presentation in front of our class. The student was advertising their club that they had just created called Algorithms for Competitions and Interviews. The club was focused on preparing people for competitive programming competitions and interviews, but they were also there to help students who were falling behind in class. I was terrified that I wasn’t going to be able to keep up with everyone else in my class. So I decided to join the club.

My experience at the club did not go in the way I had expected at all. The club had been split into three sections: ICS 111/211, ICS 311, and Mock Interviews. The two ICS sections were meant to help students in their classes, and go over concepts that related to the things they learned in class. The Mock Interview section was an area where students could practice algorithm problems that would likely encounter during a technical interview. There was no mention of a section dedicated for students to practice for competitions, but that wasn’t something I was concerned with. Naturally, I had joined the ICS 111/211 group since that’s the group that I fit me the most. However, the president of the club had other plans for me. After solving a few of the problems they gave out for my section, the president took a look at my solutions, and suggested that I head over to the Mock Interview section instead. I moved to Mock Interviews, not because I felt like I was ready to go into that section, but because I was curious to know whether or not I could. Truth be told, I felt even less confident moving into that section. A group of people who had even more experience in the Computer Science field, and I was supposed to be in the same group as them? I almost declined the offer to switch sections. But the fact that I still loved Computer Science hadn’t changed, and the idea of learning more advanced topics was enough to make me swallow my fears and take the leap of faith. It wasn’t much of a leap in reality anyways. Worst case scenario, I wouldn’t do well, and I move back to my old section. But at the time, it felt like the biggest leap of my life.

Getting an Internship the Summer of My Freshman Year

The leap that I had taken was what ended up getting me my first ever internship. The Mock Interviews section was lead by a student in his senior year. He had taken an interest in the freshman that the president of the Algorithms club had decided was too advanced for the ICS 111/211 group. I had gone to every meeting, done the practice problems, and left like a normal member of the club. I’m honestly not sure why he had taken such a large interest in me. There wasn’t much about me that was worth being interested by. Sure I was more advanced than some of the students in my grade, but I was far from perfect, I made plenty of mistakes, and I still had a long way to go before I would even call myself a full fledged computer programmer. And yet, despite my self perception, my section leader had offered to write me a recommendation to the company he had interned at the year prior, Raytheon. I hadn’t heard much about this company prior to Brandon’s offer, but upon doing some research, I was absolutely amazed. The company was the top defense contractor in the United States and top three in the world. When I had gone to their booth at the University of Hawaii at Manoa career fair, it was packed with people who were trying to give their resume to the recruiters at the booth. Some of these people were in their Junior and Seinor years; I had no chance.

But again, the idea in my head, that maybe I should take a leap of faith sprung into my mind again. Who knows what may happen if I decide to apply for the internship. I contemplated the idea for a long time, going back and forth in my decision several times. A lot of the swaying was due to my parent’s general disapproval of the concept. They had the same doubts as me, “What do I have that the other applicants don’t?”, “What makes me more capable than the rest?”, “What are the chances that I’ll be able to get the internship?” But ultimately, I made a decision. I was going to try, and I was going to see where the wind was gonna take me. I applied, got an interview, and as the title suggests, I recieved an offer for an internship.

Where I Am Now

I had returned from my internship at Raytheon less than a month ago, and a lot about me has changed. But there are still things that stayed the same. I still love Computer Science, if anything, my interest and passion had only increased from the internship. I got to work on a software project that felt more substantial than any other project I had been a part of. I had gotten to collaborate and learn from many of the people who worked at the company, and I got to make some friends there as well. But as I came back, I still find myself feeling like a fraud. I’m not as capable as I feel some people believe I am, but more importantly, I’m not as capable as I believe I should be. There are still many skills that I need to learn, more experience I need to gain, and more projects that I want to create. I’m still not good enough for my own standards. But I also learned a lesson at my internship. The only way to get better, is to push myself past what I think I am capable of. Take on challenges that I may not be able to do. Struggle, fall, get back up, and learn. That’s the most important lesson I believe I had recieved from that internship. This year, I’ll be applying for an internship position at Amazon as a Software Development Engineer. I don’t think I’m good enough for Amazon, I didn’t even think I was good enough for Raytheon. But I managed to stumble my way into Raytheon, who knows, I may be able to stumble my way into Amazon as well. But my goal is to eventually stop stumbling into the success the way I’ve done so far. Eventually, I want to be able to walk over to my goals and sieze them. Only that way, will I be satisfied with my abilities as a software engineer. Of course, there’s a much longer road ahead if I want to become a senior software engineer. I want to develop skills in areas such as Machine Learning, Data Analysis, and Algorithms. I want to learn as much as I can about the field that I have yet to even scratch the surface to.

I have a long way to go, but I’m just happy I managed to stumble across this road in the first place.