Josh on The Cliffs in LJ

Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

Life is funny sometimes, in a fitting way. It seems that I nearly always end up where I want to be, despite taking relatively awkward, indirect paths in order to get there. This blog entry will describe two cases in point…who knows where I’ll end up next…

From CE to CS to the other CS and back to CS again
In my senior year of high school I decided that I wanted to work with computers. I had always liked science, especially biology and sometimes enjoyed history, but for some reason the machines that I worked with every day excited me beyond the likes of all of my other fields of study. I decided that I would be a Computer Engineer. This was mainly because it had the word Computer in it, and I didn’t know the difference between Computer Engineering and Computer Science. I picked Engineering basically on a whim.

Skip to the Fall Quarter of my Freshman year of college. I decided to take CS 8a, an Intro to Computer Science class, where they weeded out the brave from the weak. Turned out I was weak. The whole idea of a “for” loop was beyond me. Not to mention “if,” “else,” and “boolean,” and “arrays.” I dropped the class, vowing to take the accelerated version the next quarter, while trying to catch up on my own. By the time the third week of Winter Quarter came around, I was finished with the idea of passing a Computer Science class. Again, I was lost. I just didn’t get this stuff. I dropped the class again, and decided to take a class in Cognitive Science (the other CS), which later became the topic in which I majored. I ended up taking a number of “lightweight” CS classes as I progressed toward my CogSci degree, eventually becoming a novice-moderate programmer as an Undergrad.

Cut to today. I just finished my first year toward a Master’s degree in Informatics. You better believe there’s a whole lot of Computer Science that needs to be understood in order to succeed in this field. If I took that intro to Computer Science class today, I would easily get a top grade in the class. I find that really interesting. Life sometimes runs in loops that you wouldn’t expect. Today I’m working with computers every day, exactly as I had planned in High School…I guess the path of least resistance really does work sometimes…

From San Diego to Indiana and Back
I remember talking to a recruiter from Intuit at one of the UCSD Job Fairs my Senior year of college. “What programming languages do you know?” the woman asked. I bobbled the question around, and tried to sell my CogSci degree, but I knew it just wasn’t working. Intuit would have been great because I would have been able to stay in SD, and with a name like that, then there must be some HCI and CogSci related jobs there, right? But nay, it seemed that they were dead set on hiring coders that day. None of my other job prospects turned up with a positive note, so I decided to go to graduate school.

Where did I end up next? Indiana, of all places. That was the school I applied to on a whim, but for some reason I saw the best opportunity there. After my first year there, I can say that I am extremely happy with my choice.

But now the story becomes circular, yet again. Cut to me in my new bedroom in La Jolla. I just got off from my third day of work…at Intuit. Had I not gone to Indiana, I would not have this job, I guarantee that. Again, I have ended up where I want to be, but the path has been crooked as a politician.

Sometimes you just gotta thank your lucky stars. Life works itself out if you just let it. I guess my experiences thus far are a perfect example of that…