There was this saying about this guy named Socrates and this other guy who wanted to ask Socrates how to gain wisdom. Socrates took the guy's head and drowned him long enough for him to almost get to the point where he could have died from it. The guy says, "What the hell! Why did you do that?" Socrates replies, "if your hunger for wisdom is as as important as how you wanted to breathe than you'll acquire wisdom."
I completely paraphrased that. That saying can be seen online somewhere. It's a really good saying and whenever I hear it, it makes me ask about my own. This computer science career I'm pursuing.. which I invested almost 7 years of. Sadly, I still couldn't find the same hunger as what Socrates wanted to show the guy. I've tried motivating myself. But I don't have the passion to the career as I thought I would have by now. My current professor for one of my CS courses shared a story where he taught this freshman students who are fresh from high school. He asks the students, "Which one of never wrote a program before?" He was shocked by the number of how many students raised their hands. "I hope none of you are the same!", he said to us. It's so sad that I would actually raise my hand if I was one of those freshmans.
I remember being asked during my senior year of high school by my adviser what I wanted to be. My brain was telling me, "Anything that has something to do with computers." I looked at the list and I saw computer science and thought to myself, "This looks interesting and it might give me a challenge so sure." I chose that one without really having any history or background to it. All I knew is that I'll probably just stay in front of a computer screen when I grow up. So why not do the same thing with my career? Well, hopefully, whoever reads this. Don't do the same thing. Stay in Liberal Arts at least.
After taking the first exam for my first programming class, which was C++, I found myself getting excited about programming. I thought that I was in the right major. It was so fun to analyze how data works inside the computer. It was just so fascinating it's as if it's your first time doing something you really enjoy.
Six years fast forward from that time, all I see in the mirror right now is someone who got caught too busy doing something else besides programming. Maybe I should have went for a career that is more hands on. Being in this career made me realize that hands-on careers might be more type of career. Moving around, making decisions and feeling this good sense of stress that makes you want to do more tasks. CS is so the opposite. CS is about looking a program, find ways how to construct it, finish the program, and find more bugs. The most annoying task is the most latter one. It can get frustrating to find bugs and find ways to solve 'em.
This career has some upsides though. When I do work on a program, it's just like solving a jigsaw puzzle. Boy do I love puzzles! And whenever I finish a program completely, I get this really nice happy feeling inside me. I feel so accomplished and I look forward for more. But that excitement stops there. I don't see myself doing programming outside of school. I try to do it once in a while but the excitement is not the same. I don't know why this happens. I may love programming because it reminds me of solving puzzles.. but the feeling of excitement is not as intense enough to call it my passion.
I just don't know why.
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