How I Got Here - College Years

Since I've made a few passing references to my early work experience in the last few posts, I thought it might be worthwhile to spend some time addressing how I became who I am (at least professionally).  Don't worry, you'll be able to see all the salacious details in my upcoming memoir, tentatively titled Bat Boy or Bittner Baby?  My Journey From Tabloid Superstar to Mundane Middle Manager.

How did I wind up spending my entire adult life in STEM fields?  As with most things in my life, luck.  During my high school years, I was extremely interested in science - physics in particular - and...history?

Yes.  Physics and history.  At the time, I don't know that I could've told you, what, in particular, drew me to those fields.  Even today, until I started writing this blog post, I'm not so sure, but I'll still give it a go:

Science literally makes sense of the world.  It's a method for explaining everything around us and testing it via experimentation.  In most cases (quantum physics being a notable, but fascinating, exception), it provides yes or no answers.  It deals in absolutes and lets you predict what will happen if you roll down that big hill near your house on your skateboard with loose trucks (Not good things!  Thanks physics!).

History does a good job of weaving together the events from decades, centuries, or millennia past and giving context to our current day.  It also adds perspective - we've been here before, or, this is something completely unprecedented - with a compelling narrative structure.  Good history is nothing if not facts relayed via a captivating story.  The fact that its interpretation is continually fluid is also fascinating.  Something that is often presented to children as indelible, is, in fact, subject to new discoveries and new interpretations based on the lens of the current era they're viewed through.

It seems like a no-brainer that, when choosing between the two for the college major, I would've selected the STEM one (even when STEM itself wasn't a term).  I wasn't really thinking about job prospects at 17, but engineering was definitely a more lucrative career from the start.  That being the case, the draw of getting to indulge in more science classes is what nudged me to choose mechanical engineering as a major.  I'd entertained the idea of a history minor, but it never came to fruition.

So, I was off and running in the middle of the University of Illinois cornfields.  My first two years I did fairly well in my classes, with a few notable exceptions - one being the introduction to computer science.

When I first saw CS on my curriculum, I was excited!  I'd never programmed before, but I felt competent in my DOS skills on our family 386 computer.  Now, I'd have the chance to write my own applications and expand my knowledge of computers.  

Things didn't work out as expected in the short run.  During the first class of CS 101, I learned that we'd be using Mathematica to learn programming on NeXT machines.  And that Mathematica wasn't a "real" programming language.

That confused me.  What the hell does it even mean that it isn't a "real" programming language?  Did that mean the class was completely useless?  No.  While Mathematica isn't a programming language, it has all of the necessary structures, like control flow and variable assignment, to teach the appropriate concepts.

Still, it seems odd to choose something that isn't a traditional language (likely due to the fact that Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Mathematica, founded a computing center at UIUC) and couple it with a system that no one uses (even if it was supposedly the NeXT great thing).  Then again, for all I know, my professor may have been annoyed at being forced to teach Mathematica instead of something more traditional, like C, and, hence the comment.

There were other concepts I struggled with like everyone else, like recursion (I still don't know why professors don't use simple examples to help students learn.  Is there a secret mathematical society they betray if they use informal language?) and reading compiler output.

If you've never been instructed in how a computer provides output for programming mistakes, you are going to be stuck in a computer lab for 10 hours Saturday after Saturday, growing to dread a subject like CS more and more each week.  

I recall tinkering with my code and staring at its resulting errors for about 2 hours before asking a TA for assistance.  All he did was circle the compiler output and say "It's somewhere right around here."  Well, no shit.  And a warning sign in Hanzi could tell me exactly what I shouldn't touch IF ONLY I SPOKE CHINESE.   

This was before any search engine existed, and teenage me was probably mortified about asking my peers for help.  Still, if you're going to teach an intro to CS, don't expect that everyone has been writing shitty BASIC on their TRS-80 since they were 12.  

I was interested in programming and computers but a garden variety weed-out course doused that interest for the next 6 years, which, I guess, is the point?  I've always wondered why institutes of higher learning make intro courses so convoluted to see "who can make it."  Isn't there a bigger reward in creating an educated workforce than mocking people who are making an effort while only being provided the bare minimum?  Or is there a bigger reward in indulging your insecurities, because you were able to make a name for yourself where others struggled?  You don't need to respond to that.  Sadly, I know the answer.

I'd like to say that, outside of CS, I shined in college, but, through a combination of my own laziness, some poor teaching, and too many $5 pitcher nights, I fought a pitched battle to get a low 3-point GPA and wind up in the lower-middle of the job market for the young and eager college grads.

There are certainly things I regret from my college years.  I wish I would've studied harder, because I was in an interesting field.  I wish I also had more confidence to take advantage of so many free or cheap opportunities on campus to expand my perspective.

But, as George Bernard Shaw so aptly pointed out - the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain - er, I mean youth is wasted on the young.  The tragedy of wisdom is that you only acquire it by being foolish.  Assuming I'm still around, I wonder what my 20-year older self will think of my current incarnation.  Probably that I'm a fool.

And, though I kicked myself for being a sub-par student and not getting the "good" job out of school, I recognized about 10 years into my software engineering career that had it not been for my missteps earlier I wouldn't have been in a situation that I had truly come to love.  Could I have avoided some of the heartache?  Maybe.  Could I have made more money?  Probably.  Could I have been better looking and more charming?  Never!

You can only control so much of the narrative of your life, so appreciate it for what it's worth.  Learn from your mistakes and strive to be a better person, but don't kick yourself for events that are now indelibly etched into history.

Until next time, my human and robot friends.