Advice For My Younger Self

If I could give some advice to my younger self, it would cover a few areas.  There are many lessons I have regretfully learned from mistakes that still haunt me to this day.  There are times when I wish my life was nothing like it is now.  It is disappointing to urge for another chance to make choices when reminiscing on decisions in hindsight.  This topic allows me the opportunity to mentally correct the past after living the path taken.  Some of what will be written can be reapplied to my current situation and the rest will be for someone else to deliberate on.  Let me see who I can help beside myself with this entry.  If it is one person then its effect will be positive and that alone can make the effort worthwhile. 

When it comes to school, I would say to go as far as you can and be passionate about it.  When I was very young, I would make the honor roll by dedicating my focus to performing to that standard.  Still young, I fell out of love with the merits of that achievement.  I do not remember clearly if it was the attention I did not want or if the satisfaction did not feel the same.  The intellect and attentiveness was there but I would not employ the same vigor for assignments for letter grading.  Controlling the line between B’s and C’s was just as intriguing as earning A’s on every attempt.  My advice would be to establish the constituency of recreating the best instance of myself at every moment possible.  Constructing norms and maintaining the momentum of excellence is the hidden prognostication that elucidates the educational system.  It promotes a continuous line for students to earn the proper recognition for themselves.  Students who seem to be advanced at an early age are entered into special programs.  The best elementary students enter better middle schools.  The best middle school learners enroll in premier high schools.  The best high school pupils are then accepted into prominent accredited universities.  Another pearl of wisdom I would offer is to maximize the prospect of college.  To go to college for a bachelor’s and join the workforce as soon as you can cuts off your potential too soon.  That was something I wanted at my first attempt.  Now I wish I would have considered graduate school over the anticipation of a paycheck more seriously.  The rush to have an annual salary of forty thousand at twenty-two seems miniscule to being a doctor of your chosen field at twenty-five.  Netting the credentials of an expert of your craft can mean so much more and produce many more avenues to travel down.

When it comes to life, I would say be the best overall person you can.  I heard a wise man say “sometimes you do what you gotta do to get what you gotta get”.  Excuse the grammar but it does make sense.  At times it might be the only one way to reach a particular objective.  In the case where that is true, I would question if that should be your aim going forward.  See as it stands now I think I value the virtues that are in conjunction with ideals demonstrating deference, innocence and morality.  Having respect for others and making the appropriate distinction between good and evil has a significance that is too often ignored.  Without ample validation we see the chase for other influences commence.  In a world where any publicity is good publicity, we intentionally ensure that negativity is spread faster to tap into our conscious.  But that statement is an enigma as is.  The perplexity of the paradox can be alleviated by putting more clout into things universally recognized as positive.  How is it that people who commit crimes are the first things we see on the news before being removed from free civilization?  Being a decent individual does not garner the same conversation circles or fame it once did.  The sensationalized fall from grace of the troubled makes the triumphant rise from nothing seem mundane by our culture. 

The overall advice would be to find your true self then enable happiness to be bred from that persona.  Do not let the lack of congratulations or affirmation make you alter your character to be the negative images that are portrayed more frequently.  Do not allow pain and mistrust from past relationships to rear its horrid head in the next one.  Do not surrender to pressure to prove you are something you are not comfortable with.  See, you can get it from here as I write my wrongs.  Maybe I would say do not become the person writing this paper.  Or would it be better to not have to be the reason to write this paper?  Everyone has the choice to take advice or go through the flame minus the advantage.  As we all have our one life to live hopefully we can at least determine the valleys and peaks along the way.

Why Computer Science

When I was first deciding to attend college I was not certain my major would be computer science.  During a meeting with my guidance counselor, we spoke about my grades, interests and which schools I favored.  I had fairly good grades in math and science courses at that time so she felt that should be my focus as I went forward.  Then I went home to start researching careers and what I thought I would like to be doing years in the future from that point.  Though I had grades in those courses, computer science and programming were completely new concepts to me.  Having that fresh, creative and innovative aspect to it really made me feel positive about college and being a full-time student for another four years.  It eventually took me much longer than that to get my first degree but I can tell parts of that story another time.  Honestly I just seen it as a really intriguing challenge to go to college for something I did not have any prior experience with.  Though I was up to the highest level of math courses available to us as calculus and took nearly every entry level version of science offered to me, I was not sure I wanted to make a commitment wholeheartedly to that path moving forward.  And I hope I am not offending everyone reading this with that last statement.  Computer science and programming was seen as college to me because I did not try it at any other point.  I was happy with computer science and still find it fun to some degree today.

              One of the main obstacles I had to overcome was the learning curve.  I have been taught C, C++, Java, HTML, PHP, XML, SQL, MASM, Visual Basic and COBOL as coding languages.  There was also the concepts of numbering systems, digital logic, pseudo coding, search and sort algorithms, network architectures, operating systems, multimedia applications and internet suites.  All of that was during the pursuit of my Bachelor’s degree and there may be some things I forgot to include.  Each course was different and presented a new form of coding to learn.  I leaned on sites like w3schools.com for tutoring away from the classroom.  The speed of the courses was my main obstacle in addition to the balancing of all my credits each semester was another core issue overall.  It is quite difficult to explain but I knew what I was attempting to do however the completion and execution remained problematic.  The theories were in my mind but convincing the computer did not always go so well.  Programming took the bulk of my time for adjusting to the major and it negatively affected other assignments like tests.  Being a graduate student now, I look back on those times with wisdom about what it took to get to this point.  To gain a Master’s degree would simply mean I was better than I thought I was as a student.  It would always confirm that this discipline is within the range of programs I am capable of.  

Law of Attraction

When considering the concept of the “law of attraction”, I simply reduce it to the exercise of unity progress.  As you find something that peaks your interest, you may start to assimilate in its direction to get nearer.  It could be a natural affinity or be developed and wrought over a span of time.  I feel the initial attraction starts in the mind.  To think of what draws me to something already begins the aforementioned process.  Whether it is thoughts of something you desire or what you want to be more like, you primarily analyze what that thing is first.  You think about what it is that you find so fascinating.  The notion sometimes cannot be explained with words but you know what the feeling is.  You even understand your reaction to it.  It could be a person, an idea or an object.  One then can sense possession of that indescribable quality that you enamor and cannot get enough of.
          What are some of these qualities and how do we experience them every day.  Being a college student, I think one of the first to discuss is the thirst for knowledge.  The idea of college was just magnetic to me when considering options for after high school.  It is something that I always wanted to do.  I was happy to complete applications and even more excited when I started to get responses.  If you were to ask me why was I so jovial about this process, I could tell you that I felt it was the logical next step for me.  If you were to ask me why I thought that was my main option, I am not sure I can answer that with absolute certainty.  One part of me will say that education has been a lifelong process where the completion date is always to be announced.  I do not know if there is ever a point where you could not learn new information about how to be better than you were before.  When we are young children, we are introduced to the conceptions of pre-school and kindergarten.  At that point we are taught to recreate our interpretation of what is being presented and you will be critiqued by authority for it.  You do this repeatedly and the degree of difficulty becomes greater as you age or rather as you succeed.  The ancillary lesson for most students is that acceptance can have many forms but excellence is favored.  Though I was not the best high school student, I wanted to be a graduate at the university level.  Walking across the stage was an accomplishment that I intrinsically craved and felt like I had to do.  A task I had to go through.  That had to be completed as part of defining who I am and who I wanted to be. 
          Another habit that I appear to be obsessive about is writing.  As of late, this can specifically apply to manufacturing essays for scholarship entries.  Like many college students, I could use the additional help with affording college.  It is an added bonus that I really relish the opportunities to express myself through writing.  One viewpoint of it is that someone actually values your perspective and requests insights into.  Another vantage point is the rare chance to generate the new wave of thought that others would begin to adopt.  In a world of billions of individuals and the advancements seen in communications, the probability of finding like-minded people has become ubiquitous.    The converse side, however, means the ability to conjure an inclination that can penetrate the mainstream and comes to be pervasive is definitively extraordinary.  Writing is one of the most common talents that we can share as a society.  When one is able to impress through an apparent skill that is not readily seen in others proclaims a sense of separation from what is considered normal.  It’s received by the reader as an accepted invitation to what you have to say.  Then you can captivate an audience not only by what is said but by how it is articulated. 
          The two examples discussed were of different outlooks per se.  The excitement for education, college especially, is one of introversion.  There was a goal to enhance myself and be gratified by what I have done.  The system of education is principally self-propelled for every student involved to their own satisfaction.  The line of progression could be based on your capabilities and comprehension of previous material.  The challenge of gaining advancement and approval has its own sort of allure for whoever seeks such effects.  Writing to garner the admiration of others would seemingly be an extroverted stance.  When there is a piece of writing that is truly brilliant and refreshing, the demand for others to have access to it and experience it will arise.  There will be a reason to share what you have read.  The author becomes the proverbial hot commodity.  Not only will the transformative opus be celebrated but the following composition will be on the list of many to get a copy of.  The heights of written work starts from the writer’s mind and get embraced as what’s been missing from the lives of countless readers.  Whether it is being an excellent student or becoming an exceptional writer, both could be tales of a manifest destiny for a person and both can make that person a lodestone for anyone who values those achievements.