I knew nothing about computer science in high school. Korean education still encouraged people to study law, finance, or something in those fields. I wanted to get into Finance. In fact, I had the Asian kid’s dream of achieving something prestigious yet you have no clue of(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx4poQw1mZo). I actually hung on to this idea of working in the Finance industry for a while, but I’ll write another short post about how I came to let that idea leave my system. The closest I have been to programming was when the smartest kid in my class made an app that published our school dining hall food. It sounds funny but the app became viral as the school I went to was famous for having amazing food. So I started as an economics major. I had the opportunity to live with a Comp Sci major from Costa Rica. Cris already had some background as he graduated from a Cisco establishment before coming to NYU and I could see him doing some cool stuff from time to time.

One day in Freshman Fall I was coming back from my Microeconomics class 101 where they teach you everything with the tag ‘this might not be applicable in the real world.’ It devastated me. Imagine you want to be the world’s best chef and they tell you to boil something for 5 minutes and end it with ‘but in the real world, you might have to boil 3 minutes, maybe 8 minutes.’ And then boom! I came back to my room and my roommate was making a graphic game. Right there, Freshman Fall. It shocked me. He was making something out of scratch that is presentable. Imagine what he can build with 8 semesters. So next semester I enrolled in a Core curriculum class teaching basic Python and moved on to become a Comp Sci major. I graduated with a Comp Sci and Econ double major with a minor in Associated Mathematics but when people ask me what I studied, I usually stop at Comp Sci. And in fact, that is what I feel like the one thing I barely properly learned in my 4-year education at uni.

I had my ups and downs with Comp Sci and my programming career, but it is still one of the best choices I made. It also led me to start my career in tech, but I will cover that in another blog post.