Opportunity by Vincent

Opportunity by Vincent - January 2018 Scholarship Essay

When my friend introduced me to the UCLA’s summer computer science program, I immediately seized the opportunity. I had always been interested in programming, and this was my chance to learn it in an academic environment. Little did I know that the UCLA program was far from an introductory course; instead, it was an advanced supplement to high school computer science.

Coming into the program with little formalized computing training, I quickly realized that the odds were stacked against me. Almost everyone there had prior programming experience, and the ones that didn’t were so intimidated by the endless walls of code that they quit after the first day. While my peers breezed through projects, I struggled to articulate my thoughts and ideas into the coding language. Code like “random.randint(0,1) if x==0 else x for x in rows” perplexed me. However, I refused to give up so I browsed through strange forums and asked questions to my professors to understand computing terms.

By the fifth day of the program, I successfully made a bubble sort function that enabled me to solve the real-world problem of finding the shortest route to travel all fifty states. Although I solved a problem that only the president would have, I was ecstatic to create something that worked.

The class quickly advanced onto new topics. From creating mobile applications to navigating through database systems, my excitement and knowledge about computer science grew. Eventually, I learned enough to discuss computing concepts in depth with my peers and instructors. I began to regularly stay after class to dedicate extra time to working on more ambitious projects like programming m-beds as video game controllers. Though I still had a long way to go in programming, I could finally appreciate the program’s rigor.

So, the big question is why do I want to attend college? Well, the answer is opportunity. Opportunity to be bad at something and improve. Opportunity to reach for the stars and be great. Opportunity to learn for learning's sake and grow as a person. Though some opportunities may take the form of challenges like my UCLA summer program, I know that some things can't be gained without struggle. I am pursuing higher education for opportunity.