Dezmanique Martin
Computer Science101
Duke University
December 10, 2016

Discovering the Importance of Doing What I Love

A major question in life is “does who we are shape what we do or does what we do shape who we are?" The answer to this question will differ dependent on the type of people you ask. I feel like a lot of first-generation students were raised that what they do will shape the person they will become, but coming to college has opened a lot of our eyes.
The majority of people arrive at college with a decided major, but at least half of those people end up changing, why do you think that is? I think it is because they begin to realize that what you do does not shape who you are and that it is instead the other way around.
My entire life I have done what I was supposed to, because my family depended on me going to college. In high school, everyone constantly asked me like I was going to do for the rest of my life. Like I was supposed to know, I haven’t even lived half my lifetime and yet I’m supposed to have my whole life planned. 
Kudos to anyone who knew what they were going to do for the rest of life and followed through. I have changed my mind so much. I started off wanting to be a veterinarian, to a singer, dancer, to a teacher, a pharmacist, to a school counselor, to a video game designer, and then finally to a software engineer.
To become a software engineer, you had to major in computer science, so I started prepping myself. I had an internship at Georgia Tech working under Information Scientist and Software Engineers learning JavaScript and Python. My first instance programming was creating a guessing game in python. It was so complicated but once I got it to work I was so happy, I don't think I had ever been happier. That moment confirmed that I wanted to major in Computer Science.
Coming to Duke, and taking my first Computer Science class, I knew I had my work cut out for me, but I had felt a little ahead of the game because I spent a year acquainting myself with code, but of course none of it mattered. Computer Science 101 felt like getting hit by a tornado and living inside it constantly spinning and in fear. I loved learning all the interesting things, but I hated all the work. We had something to do like every day and coming from a school where I did as minimal as possible, this was so hard. 
Through all this turmoil, I lived for when I would get the code right. I loved turning that apt all green, those are probably the happiest moments I’ve ever had at Duke. After turning those APTs green I felt like I was on top of the world and nothing could bring me down, except more code, so I would just be done with Computer Science for the rest of the day even if I had an assignment due the next day. I just wanted to live in that moment.
Getting parts of the assignment also made me happy. I would have enjoyed the assignments if there wasn’t so much to them, but there was nothing more exciting than seeing the computer do what I asked it to. My favorite assignment was the hangman because it was so fun to play and to know I made it. 
While taking this class, I became discouraged that I could major in computer science, but I think it was more the workload than the content. I have learned that if you like something, you must work REALLY, REALLY hard at it. So, 201 bring it on.