Anyone Can Code
While I was in college, there was always a stereotype that computer science majors were somehow smarter than everyone else. That for some reason, we just had to be better and brighter to be where we are now. But in all honesty, that’s just a big, fat lie.
And this isn’t to say that my cs peers were dumb, but more so rather say that my peers in other majors were just as intelligent and talented, if not more in their own respective fields. But more so than that, it’s also to say that they could’ve been computer science majors too if they really wanted to.
I was a shitty student. I can tell you right now what my grades for my cs course were:
CSE 142: 2.6
CSE 143: 2.4
CSE 311: 3.2
CSE 351: 2.2
CSE 332: 2.9
CSE 312: 3.0
CSE 484: 3.9
CSE 331: 3.0
CSE 333: Withdrawn
CSE 421: 3.0
CSE 442: 3.0
CSE 341: 3.1
CSE 344: 3.1
CSE 440: 3.8
CSE 482: 4.0
There it is in full glory. My grades for my cs classes. Keep in mind, besides my intro courses, these were courses that graded on a curve of 3.5+. That means that the average student would get a 3.5 in the class. Again, 50% of students would be getting a 3.5 or above. Looking at my grades, it’s quite easy to tell that I was rarely in that top half.
And yet, I still graduated this past June with my B.S. in Computer Science. As miserable and stupid as I felt in so many moments, I still finished. I still got that degree. And while my content knowledge may be a lot less than many of my peers, I still learned how to code.
For a while now I’ve had the thought that I probably should have been a humanities major. Education, communications, political science, international studies, these subjects all sound WAY more interesting than computer science to me.
But I still learned how to code. I know what loops and variables and classes and methods and all sorts of things are. I can implement a stack if I really needed to or check if a given word is a palindrome or not. I can take a csv file and turn it into a dataframe and perform analysis on it. All these things that I can do now that make me sound smart or whatever people want to label me as. I learned how to do all these things, even if I hated it and was not good at it. And I think that’s something a lot of college students don’t recognize about computer science: anyone can do it. I truly had a miserable four years of being a computer science student. You can ask any of my close friends and they could tell you. And yet I still did it.
And this post isn’t to bring me down. I’m not trying to say that I’m just dumb and know nothing, but it’s more so rather to tell people that cs isn’t meant for a specific group of people. It isn’t meant for those who scored high on the SAT or ACT or can memorize 100 digits of pi. Nor is it meant for those that love to game or build their own PCs or take quantum mechanic courses. I am a strong believer that computer science can be for anyone. It doesn’t matter if you never coded while growing up or if you didn’t do too hot in math or science, you can still do it. I didn’t even want it and I could still do it. So if this is something you want, run for it. The gatekeepers here are all fake. There’s no need to feel like you aren’t good enough because 99.9% of people are in that same boat. And sure, maybe your journey will take longer or shorter than four years, that’s totally okay. Maybe certain concepts will you confuse you longer than it confuses others, that’s okay. That’s not an indicator that you can’t or shouldn’t, it’s just an indicator of what you need to get to where you want to be. And the truth is, the field needs more voices. We need those who don’t have the traditional pathways to enter into tech. Because the current people in tech are building things that interest them. And I think it’s a pretty monotonous world for the most part. We need new voices and people who care and love different things to come in and spice up this world. We need you.
So if you want it, good luck! I KNOW you can do it!
