The Trip That Sealed My Fate by Lia

The Trip That Sealed My Fate by Lia - May 2023 Scholarship Essay

The Trip That Sealed My Fate
Robots, Artificial Intelligence, computers, and smartphones are increasingly evolving as the human population that resides on our planet grows. It would make sense for one to wish to take control of this new emerging technology and understand how they work. What goes on inside the computer as it processes your search? How are we able to write text on the very machine I typed this paper on? What are the cells that make up this computer made of? All of these questions can be answered through the study of Computer Science.
Computer Science also known as CS for short is what I aspire to study in college/ university. I desire to study this subject because I know it will answer all the questions I wish to know about how technology works. It will teach me about the building blocks of computers, and how to create my own. I want to learn how to write code and create new games, and websites. I want to be part of something that could help change the world and help advance technology beyond what we are currently capable of.
I choose computer science as the subject of my interest because, from a young age, I have always been fascinated by all kinds of technology. I grew up with my father always working on computers and fixing them. He had such a passion for his job that it inspired me to learn more about computers and how to mend them. As I attended middle school I realized that we had a class that would teach us the basics of programming. Up until this point, I had no interest in programming. I wanted to learn how to fix computers, not write code, however, since it was the only class at my school that taught us something about technology I took it, and oh my did I hate it. I hated coding. I really did, my first semester in that class felt as though someone had tossed me into Tartarus and told me to survive. I hated everything about it, so badly that I wanted to drop the class, which was of course juvenile in an immigrant household. I had no other choice but to accept my fate and deal with the torments of that class. By the time the second semester rolled around, I realized maybe that class was not so bad after all. Suddenly the lines and lines of code did not seem so difficult to decode and were even easier to write. I loved that class, it became my favorite class and influenced me to consider computer science in my future.
I loved that class so much that during 8th grade I took the next level. It is a bit of a funny story about how that came to happen. Originally I had no interest in taking the class again because I had already taken one year of it, so instead I had chosen my elective to be an office TA. About a week into the 8th grade my old computer science teacher came into the office and saw me working there. She was shocked that I would choose office TA and waste my skills on something so trivial, so she took it into her hands to convince me to take the next part of the class, and I immediately listened to her advice and changed my class. During my 8th grade year in that class, I was recognized as one of the best STEAM girls in our entire school and was invited to visit Warner Brothers. The trip to Warner Brothers is still one of my favorite trips I have ever taken. The tour was absolutely exhilarating. I had the most fun and learned so much more about what went on behind the scenes of a movie and show production. We learned how to analyze data and understand it, and we even got to see some of the technical machines used on set. At the end of that wonderful day, we left for home with a bag of goodies from Warner Brother. Inside that very bag resided my very first computer.
After coming into high school I continued to take more technology-related classes. In 10th grade, I took a computer science A class, and currently in 11th grade I just took the Ap computer science A exam on May 3rd ( hoping for the best). I am also taking an Info to Technology and Cloud Computing course as well, which made me even more sure that I want to major in computer science and not IT as I had originally wanted as a child.