Hi there,

My name is T and I am a Computer Science major, graduated from a legit State school university. Sorry for being vague but you can never be too safe. I currently am a software developer at a major software/hardware company. It has been a long journey for me to get to this point but I would like to share my story with you.

As a child I loved "the way things work" books, mainly for the pictures showing all the little components and how they work together. I barely graduated with a 1.6 GPA from one of the top highschools in California. I struggled with being engaged in classes and spent most of my time skateboarding, playing video games and hanging out with friends like any teenager would. I had an affinity for building things and figuring out how things worked, including messing around with modifying the engine in my car and woodworking. My educational experience has been extremely frustrating up until a few years ago, because I never really fit in to the standardized education system. Many times in my schooling I was treated as a kid who just "needed to pass" and never encouraged or identified as someone who just wasn't challeneged enough, or in the right way. I eventually found my way into the tech industry doing IT support for the general public, at company 'A'. I LOVED the way their machines were designed, the internal hardware was beatuiful. The software 'just made sense'. I was given enormous opportunities to advance at this company, eventually being a certified technician after being flown out to train for 3 weeks. I worked there for under a decade, and decided to return back to school to learn how to code. When I began college I was told from an advisor that "if I don't understand math or are natrually good at math, I should consider switching my major as CS is very math heavy and challenging". This frustrated me quite a bit because it was as if the last 7-8 years of my career learning about the ins and outs of the industries most admired computer hardware and software was worth nothing. Everybody was a "PC" person and thought that fixing computers was something I should have learned as a young child. Clearly, it was hard to fit in at college as well, being older than most students, and being a socialable, outgoing, apple fanboy. Nevertheless I pushed forward, and met some amazing people who shared similar outlooks on learning.

There was a moment when I decided I was going to graduate with a CS degree, no matter how hard anyone said it was. I failed both required calculus classes a total of three times, mainly becuase I am not the best test-taker. Many people would say that's crazy- and that I am dumb, but I call it determined. Failure is an opportunity to prove to yourself that you can succeed. I finally got through those (un)neccesary classes, and into the upper division CS classes. I was recognized for an independent study project, and multiple teachers congratulated me upon completion, saying that it's one of "the best and most creative projects we've seen". I was asked to show and talk about the project to incoming Freshman students at the University. I have taken this project to the next level and it has the capability of becoming it's own product. Multiple employers I have interviewed with have shown more interest in my independent project than anything else on my resume, including some cool blockchain and difficult parallel programming courses.

I even created my own object detection and image classification app, utilizing the industries brand new tools, and machine learning algorithms. It did earn wonderful attention of my professor- but because it was passed off as an open-ended "create your own" senior year project, it didn't get as much recognition from employers as I had hoped. It was my previous independent project that I thought of on my own, born out of my life's passions that got the recognition.

I would encourage every one of you reading this to embrace yourself as an individual and act on what you feel makes you happy. That doesn't mean you don't put in the hard work to get what you want- there's PLENTY of hard work that had to be done to get to where I am. But doing all of the work for a CS degree while being a curious individual and never letting go of my imagination, or conforming it to the standardized view of eduaction- It feels amazing to have accomplished that. And you can feel the same way too, just don't give up.

From a young age I had a knack for understanding complex systems- It just wasn't channeled in the right direction until I turned 24, when I wrote my first "Hello World!" in C++.

Don't give up on something you really want. Be inspired by what you love.