I was sitting in my third grade classroom when I decided that I was going to be a lawyer. Why did I want to be a lawyer, because a lawyer reads, writes, argues, and defends ideas. Those are all the skills I wanted to practice in my career. After I made the decision to become a lawyer, and told my parents about it I began preparing myself for it. I read voraciously, joined the debate team, studied philosphy, learned a new language, and tried to figure out the causation of events in the world.
Fifteen years later I decided it wasn’t the career for me. I was going to be an engineer. What made me decide to switch? All my freshman year economics classes. I chose to major in economics because I wanted to be a corporate lawyer. I was being taught that economics was a dismal science, one that wasn’t very precise, and that the problems in this field were monumental and virtually unsolvable due to the nature of men. Imagine someone telling you at 18: “99% of what you study in economics will not be applicable to the read world.” What a great ROI, 4 years of majoring in economics + $100k in tuition = B.S.
The search for a new career began. I always loved the sciences, especially neurobiology. Perhaps I could be a doctor, no a surgeon! Yes I was going to Neuorsurgeon. Imagine being Indian and telling your parents over winter break, “Mom, dad, I’m going to drop econ and major in biology so that I can become a neuorosurgeon.” Most Indian parents or parents in general would be ecstatic. Not my dad…”It’s a very noble profession. But it will take a long time, and med school is expensive. Why not go into engineering?” Engineering? What the hell is engineering? Its 9-5 sitting in front of the computer, going into a fab and watching robots move stuff around, and it involved math, a lot of math, I hate math! Plus, I had just taken a computer science class (to humor my dad, and because he was footing the bill for my education); my first semester I enrolled in CPS 6: Program Design and Analysis I. I sat through an entire 2/3 of a semester saying to myself, “WTF?” The other 1/3 I spent at the gym… I didn’t know what was going on, in lecture, in lab, and definitely not on the midterm! I tried, I failed, and I quit. “Next career please!”
Perhaps I had been too pre-judgmental about economics. So my second semster freshman year I enrolled in both micro- and macroeconomics. To make a long story short, I went with my gut; economics and I weren’t going to jive. Now a whole year had gone by, and while most freshman weren’t bothered by being undeclared, I needed a purpose, I needed a passion, I needed a major!
The summer after my freshman year I decided to stick around my college and experience CPS 6: Program Design and Analysis I round 2. I dedicated all my time and energy to this class, and learning just what the field was about. It turned out that there were so many facets, there was graphics, gaming, artificial intelligence, and my favorite bioinformatics; I could combine my computer savviness with the sciences! I ended up enjoying CPS 6 a lot. Call it the desire for instant gratification, but writing a program and seeing it work is one of the greatest feelings in the world for a novice programmer.
And the rest is history right? Not quite, the second semester of my sophomore year I was in CPS 104: Computer Organization and Programming, coding in assembly was boring as hell, but learning about computer architecture was awesome. I really enjoyed learning about systems, and how they were organized. I wanted to learn more. But that would mean switching to electrical and computer engineering, which would also mean transferring to the engineering school. So I met with the dean of the engineering school. Who basically told me I was going to be on the 5 year plan, because I was behind in my required curriculum. She basically wanted me to tell my parents, “Mom, dad, I need you to shell out another $35k, because I wasted the first on my freshman year economics major.” That was not going to happen, but I also wasn’t going to turn away from a challenge.
So I overloaded, I overloaded, and I overloaded. Can’t say I ended up with the best GPA, but my senior year first semester I took 5 engineering classes including two grad level, and made Dean’s List. Take that Dean Simmons! What did I give up? Tenting for bball games, partying, going dancing with my girlfriends, and all the time college students spend screwing around I spent in lab or TAing. Was it worth it, would I do it again? In a heartbeat! Sacrifice is defined as giving up a higher value for a lower one. If you’re passionate about something, in my case engineering, then giving up other things isn’t considered a sacrifice, because your working towards achieving your highest value.
Which brings me to present day, Saturday March 24th, 2007, I’ve been an engineer for almost 3 years now. I decided to start this blog for two main reasons: my passion for engineering and writing. You’ll figure out the ancillary reasons as you read my posts, and see the evolution of their content. Have a great day!
