Anything Goes

To make a long story short, and shorter, I never intended taking a college course where information technology was involved. The usual perception that people have on Chinese, even now, whether mixed in blood or not was that it always ends up with business. Not for me. I’m different. For one thing, I hate facing up to people, selling things to them, and most of all convincing them to buy your product which was the primary reason I never took a Marketing course during college. Hey, if a person says no, I ain’t forcing anymore because I would want people to get lost once I tell them no. Brute force marketing can test your patience. And it’s a pretty bad idea to use that approach when dealing with your customers because you will get on their nerves sooner or later. So it was enrollment day and I decided that I would take up Business Management (got nothing else in mind). It was quite funny because I saw a high school batch mate of mine and I asked her where the office of the dean of Commerce was. She probably did not hear which dean I was talking about because I went to the director of Computer Science instead which coincidentally, was her course. It was also a coincidence that prior to the enrollment, I received an invitation from the university if I wanted to enroll in their CS department. So the director there actually thought I went there to enroll for that course. Guess she was so hyped up to see all my Math grades so high that she wanted me to enroll in that course. Little did she know that I got those high marks because I was a very efficient cheater ha ha ha. So we talked and talked and she kept on asking me to enroll. After what seemed like an eternity of hearing the same thing all over again, I said yes. And that folks, was how I got my Computer Science course. Computer stuffs were never my thing. Back when 286 CPUs were commonplace, I barely even knew how to use it except play on Wheel of Fortune during my high school computer classes. It was quite funny when I started using a 386 PC at school because the first reaction that I had after I did the command “type <FILENAME>” was “yikes! virus!”. I thought that command was the command to compile my source code into machine code. And so, my journey into the computer world had started.

Adjusting myself to be computer savvy was not a fairly easy task. I had to experience a virus attack right away the moment my PC got into my room. I had to keep on asking my classmate about computer stuffs in order to familiarize myself. I was also internet-dumb that time because the internet only came into existence in my place during the 2nd half of my 3rd year in college. I also had to endure a teacher who had the biggest ego I know (I’m sure he’s still full of ego when he grows old) and who insults his students instead of encouraging them. That or maybe I just needed to have knowledge about computers in order for me to fully grasp the lessons that were hurled upon me during my 4 years in college. There was one positive that came out of this. I was one of this teacher’s pet. Every day, when his class begins, I was one of the 3 who always gets called first to answer his question. My mistake, I was not his pet. I was probably his pest. My course’s curriculum was also not ideal in my opinion. Most subjects were of the theoretical type. I wanted hands on experience to be able to understand in depth what the programming language we used really was. The subjects were pretty useless to me. I didn’t take on that course to become a scientist. I also had to endure an exam when I answered all the bonus questions instead of the main ones. Couldn’t blame myself. The bonus questions were printed by a computer printer while the main questions weren’t. So I thought the paper used for the questionnaires were scratch papers reused so they wouldn’t go to waste. That kept me wondering why my teacher gave us topics to expect would be in the exams and not one of them were there in the questionnaires that I focused on (which were the bonus questions). I cried after the exam because I was so sure that I would flunk the subject. Good thing my friend told my teacher about it and he gave me another chance to retake the exam (except that I had to study the whole book). Luckily, I passed the subject. That experience was probably the lowest point in my life as it triggered another bad luck for me. Because I was so low in knowing that I answered the wrong questions, I wasn’t able to study for my next exam the next day. I kept on crying that night and went to my friend’s house for group study late that night. It didn’t do any good as I couldn’t focus over what just happened. When the next exam came, I finally got caught of cheating. Tsk. Tough luck. As I said, that was probably the lowest point in my life because I struck out twice. The previous day’s exam and now this? Sadly, the teacher flunked me on her subject. When I went to her to talk about it and asked for an appeal, I found out that even if I got a zero on my exam, my final grade would still had been high. I was so darn pissed when I learned that because before the exam I actually went to see her to check if I could be exempted from the exam. Ironically, she told me I would get an F if I didn’t take it. I was so mad at her because I had no idea how she calculated my grades that made it an F when in fact my grade was already high even if I didn’t take the exam.She became my teacher enemy #2. I had to endure seeing her face for another semester because she was the only one teaching that subject. To sum it up, I really didn’t learn much after my 1st year in college. I learned a bit about Pascal but really couldn’t grasp the inner workings of programming languages. The C language was worse. Thank God, I’m done with schooling.

My real passion was actually computer animation. I loved the idea of doing 3d movies but there were just not much resources to use and play around with. The highlight of my career came when I had to work in another city because my ex girlfriend lives there. I forced myself to learn programming because there were no graphic-related jobs available. Just to work there and be with my ex-girlfriend, I had to study programming all over again. It was not an easy transition for me. Since then, I’ve been doing programming though I can’t see myself doing this forever. I have no regrets in deciding that I took Computer Science as my course. Things were never easy for me. But in the end, I was able to conquer all my obstacles. Who knows, if I proceeded to delve into the commerce world, I would never have met my fiancee either.