This story was written as part of my portfolio for UWP1, a writing class at UC Davis. It is by far the craziest and most genuine narrative I have ever written in my whole life.
It was my first quarter in university, and I already hated my major.
Learning to program was, to me, like learning a new language. It was as if I had just learned English for the first time and didn’t know how combine words into sentences. As a result, every assignment felt like this:
Okay, so you learned the letters of the alphabet, right? Great! Now go write an essay.
If it took me two and a half hours to figure out a simple while loop, was I stupid? I didn’t know what I was doing, and the first tears dripped on my cheeks. Was CS meant for me?
Soon, I was gasping for air and eventually, I couldn’t breathe.
I was drowning.
**
His name was Rob Gysel.
He was perhaps 6-feet tall, and he looked so young that on the first day of lecture, I had mistaken him for a TA. He taught me ECS30, my second programming class at UC Davis in Winter Quarter, and although I looked up to him as my idol, I thought he was intimidating so I never spoke to him.
But two days before the final, I thought I was going to fail because I had no idea what I was doing throughout the quarter. Hesitant and nervous, I gathered up my courage to speak to him at his last office hour. And I made the right choice.
“Do it. Don’t quit. If you fail, try again,” Rob told me and some other students at his office. His words were clichéd yet so powerful; it was as if the king was sending his soldiers off to war. That war was ECS40, Software Development and Object-Oriented Programming, my next programming class.
**
Having taken ECS40 as an undergrad, Rob alerted us, “It’s a weeder class.”
With my current programming ability, would I survive the war?
Spring Quarter came. On the first day of ECS40, the classroom filled up, and the air was tense. The seats were full and around twenty latecomers were left to stand.
“Look left. Now look right. Out of the three of you, one will be left sitting in here in two weeks,” Sean Davis, our instructor, warned us. After he handed our first programming assignment for the quarter, fear swept through my mind: I couldn’t imagine coding a huge-ass calendar program on my own.
I was doomed.
Panicked, I tried to find ways to survive. So later that day, I desperately texted one of my friends:
“Do u wanna partner with me for ECS40?”
A second later, he replied:
“Do you want to do it tonight? I don't have partner yet.”
Phew. I thought I wasn’t going to drown anymore. By the end of Week 1, my seatmates already dropped the class and by Week 3, one-third of the class disappeared, like dead soldiers on the battlefield. However, I ended up sitting on a chariot, oblivious to the bloodshed, while my partner was fighting our battle.
**
My inability to contribute to the partnership made me feel more powerless. I was crying in every place imaginable – from bathroom stalls to study halls, and three weeks into the quarter, I have had enough. Hoping to alleviate my pain, I tried to force myself to enjoy ECS40, like a kid forcing herself to eat vegetables. I didn’t want to give up, yet I didn’t see the point in fighting a fight that I didn’t love to death.
Then, I lost my mind. On a Sunday afternoon, I reached for my laptop and furiously typed an e-mail to Rob:
“Do you have any tips on how to start enjoying ECS40? I tried asking myself, but to no avail.”
The next day, Rob e-mailed me back:
“I can't say I have advice on how to start enjoying a topic, but I will say that it is natural to:
· Become disillusioned / disappointed with your studies. This is a "the grass is always greener on the other side" sort of thing. I also felt this way even though I enjoy what I do now.”
The idea that he went through the same shit as I did blew my mind.
· “Few people really "like" learning to program. It's like riding a bike, except you fall off over and over and over and over and over... but regardless of where you go in life, this will be a useful skill for you to have. Keep at it.”
I was tired from drowning, and I needed air. Desperate, I flung my arms wildly for the millionth time, only to find myself in the same, dark abyss.
**
“Mom, I want to quit.”
I had come home from preschool, and was supposed to get ready for voice lessons. Instead, I lay down in bed with my schoolwear, not wanting to get up.
“You have a rare voice. For someone as young as you are, you have an extraordinary timbre. You make me proud as a teacher!” I remember my voice instructor tell me. But I was five. I quit anyway, and I was glad I never had to sing again.
Five years later, puberty changed my voice. I tried hitting the high notes that I could easily belt before. Instead, my voice cracked. At the same time, I started to grow a love for music and I wanted another chance at solo singing. So, I asked my mom, “May I have private singing lessons again?”
“No.” That was all I heard.
I may have wasted my chance for private instruction, but I wasn’t ready to give up. I joined the school choir, but people judged me because I craned my neck like a giraffe just to reach the high notes.
Eventually, choir after choir, my worst fears were confirmed: “You can’t belt out high notes like a diva. It will ruin your vocal cords,” three of my conductors told me. My dreams were crushed. Again.
However, they told me that I had a shot at classical singing. And they found something in me that others didn’t have: I could hit the low notes.
After years of intensive practice, in choir and in the shower, I got to represent my country in international choral competitions, both as a singer and a soloist. But as I filled out college applications for Berklee, I stopped halfway - I couldn’t apply as a voice performance major because my parents hadn’t allowed me to get vocal private instructions.
If only I hadn’t quit early on, I would be singing my heart out in a conservatory. Even then, my fight to sing again carried me halfway across the globe, and I was proud for committing to a dream I never thought would almost come true. I learned my lesson.
But I had other dreams. At the age of sixteen, an autobiography marked my first introduction to CS. “Delivering Happiness” tells a story of a tech entrepreneur, Tony Hsieh, who built Zappos, an online shoe retail company. The book mesmerized me into seriously considering entrepreneurship and CS as a career path: if I could code, I could create anything I wanted. I wasn’t familiar with the CS territory, but I was ready to take the leap of faith, or I thought I was. So I plunged into the unknown, hoping to recreate the magic that happened with music. But this time, I wanted my dream to come true.
**
Here I was, in my path to becoming a programmer. I was so close to studying at a conservatory that could possibly land me a career in music, yet I made a misstep: I quit. I hated my life, but I convinced myself that I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
“Do it. Don’t quit,” I heard Rob’s voice echoing at the back of my head, a reminder to keep going.
So I kept going, but my fight wasn’t over. Once I found my purpose to continue programming, my fear morphed into a more powerful kind. Week after week, my partner eventually found out my weakness: I couldn’t code.
“Can you code this part?” my partner asked one time.
I shivered, my palms sweat, and my brain froze.
It was Week 6, and the calendar program that we created on Week 1 had become ridiculously complex. Without a solid understanding of the basic program, of course I had no idea how to tackle the sophisticated one.
“No, but can you please help me?” I asked, as I braced myself for what was to come.
“YOU JUST NEED TO THINK!” my partner yelled in frustration, occasionally slamming his hands on his laptop. BANG BANG BANG. I shut my eyes. I could understand his anger, but with every slam of his hands, I felt more and more stupid.
Eventually, he finished the program. Head buried deep under water, I wondered why I was still alive.
**
Traumatized, I went on my little adventure to The Office to look for hope. The hallway was dark like an aisle in an old church, and the only light came from the glass windows high up above.
He won’t be in his room, I told myself.
“Thank you,” I heard a female voice from inside The Office. I waited in the hallway and saw her exit. This was my chance. I made a right turn and was blinded by the bright fluorescent lighting.
“Hi, Rob!” I tried to incorporate my fake cheerful persona, and was smiling widely.
Rob got up from his desk, walked towards the door, and asked me, “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Uhh.. not-so-great. I got a D for my math midterm….” my eyes drifted downwards, and I slowly showed him a side of me that I’ve never exposed before: pain.
“I’m sorry,” he said with full sympathy.
“Well, D for Determination, right?” I tried to laugh at my failures.
He managed to let out a small laugh. And then, silence.
“Rob, ECS40 is really really hard,” I said, breaking the silence. “I am internally crying.”
I lied. I wasn’t internally crying - I was crying on a regular basis.
“But if you take a class with Sean Davis, you will be really prepared for your upper div classes!” Rob told me. “Trust me. It will get better.”
Nice try, Rob.I wish I could believe you.
“I was wondering if you have tips for finding a programming partner,” I said.
“Find someone with the same skill,” Rob said. “I had a partner for my very first program in ECS40, but he ended up completing the work so I dropped him afterwards. He didn’t react well at the start, but we’re good friends now.”
I was mind-blown, again. How could we share so many experiences? I looked back to my own partner. Coming in, he was more advanced than I was. It’s not that I was lazy, but he ended up doing all of the work. When was I going to learn? I was already clueless at the start, and with this going on, I was becoming more clueless. I was doomed. Yet I didn’t realize that I started thinking… out loud.
“THAT is what happening to me! I don’t know what’s going on, I feel so lost,” I said, suddenly forgetting proper English grammar.
“Leave the group.”
My jaw dropped.
“I didn’t have a partner since then – ECS40, ECS60, I did those on my own,” Rob continued on.
But he was a god! Wait… maybe that was why. He learned to program the hard way and grasped material at his own pace.
“If I don’t understand shit in ECS40, I’m going to die in ECS60!” I said. ECS60, Data Structures and Programming, is the next programming-intensive CS course after ECS40.
“Yeah, that’s right. You know what to do now.”
I wasn’t quite ready to leave the safety net of my partner, yet I knew he was right. It was my first gasp of air in nine months. Rob was my lifeguard.
**
After passing ECS40, I left the group. I may not have had the programming capability, but I had the courage.
I learned to accept that it is okay to drown. It is okay to black out, especially when I plunged into the water not knowing how to swim. I learned to embrace the uncertainty and confusion, instead of letting them scare me to death. Drowning wasn’t fun, and fear tempted me to give in. But I knew that if I gave in just because I wasn’t having fun or because I was scared of the water, I wouldn’t be able to swim for the rest of my life.
At the start of Summer Session 1, I began a new chapter in my life. I tackled ECS50, my next programming class, with a new mindset. Like before, I was initially clueless on how to solve my programming assignments. But this time, I treated my cluelessness as an opportunity to learn. As soon as I saw room for improvement, I became more active in and out of class: I frequently asked my instructor for help, and I coded all of the assignments on my own. As a result of my hard work, I aced ECS50. I know I still have a long journey ahead, but after realizing that I have the potential to code, I am thrilled to announce that I will continue exploring the vast ocean that I call CS.
I also thank my lifeguard. Without him, I would still be paralyzed in my ocean of fear and hatred.
With my newfound confidence, I made my way up the cliff, and jumped for the second time. This time, I bid my fears farewell.
Then, I hit the water.
Author’s note: Despite prior tensions with my ECS40 partner, we have resolved the situation and are on friendly terms now.