Not Limiting
My passions did not begin with computer science. In fact, for a very long time, I was interested in medicine. As the oldest of the cousins on my Dad’s side and second oldest on my Mom’s, I was quite focused in terms of academics. Both sides wanted a doctor in our generation. All of my Mom’s sisters went into the medical field and watching Bill Nye the Science Guy and SciQ from a young age, it was an easy choice at the time to make. However, an influence from Wild Kratts and a strong want for a pet dog, I thought perhaps the veterinary sciences were for me. Then I had a bout of fascination with genetic counseling after a career fair where a student’s mother at my elementary school introduced me to the occupation.
Computer science is not the type of job that you necessarily must have wanted to do as soon as you understood what a job was or were pushed to say. It also is something that you can integrate into many different types of fields. Code needs to be written so that hospital records and databases are secure and running, cryptocurrency is now a thing of the present, and in transportation things such as GPS are now commonplace. Therefore a person who has experience and knowledge in both fields is beneficial to those who want to accomplish it and to the person themselves. So for those in college planning or currently majoring in computer science if it is not your sole interest in life, which I assume is the case for many such as myself, go ahead and minor or double major in something completely different and unrelated. This is similar to how in the medical field I have heard application readers appreciate when an applicant has not majored in the typical Biology or Biochemistry; that is not to say that those who do take that route are any less unique.
Even within computer science, things such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and applications are all a part of that field. The skills needed for each subject can be wildly different and the diversity of the people in each role is all the more needed. As a woman who is Brazilian, Asian, and American I have many a time felt as if I do not fit in. However, as cheesy as it sounds, computer science is a field where solutions that are unlike others around them are respected, discussed, and are a part of how that section operates. In my high school computer science class alone, there were at least three various ways you could complete a task. Computer science is a field where one can explore their interests and how they can interact with each other as well as find a community among people who sometimes can understand the power of people who think differently than you.
Michelle Hwu