Tuesday, September 6, 2011

C++ a language of computer jargon

Today was the start of my second week at the great and wonderful BYU...


I have loved every second in Utah. It is like a postcard
everywhere you look and it is amazingly cool!

I am in a small graduate program for communications. There are ten of us in the program and we all have the same classes together and all of them are in the same classroom at the same oblong table.

I am taking my first computer programing class this semester and was trembling with trepidation as I walked through the door and found my seat in a sea of computer geeks. Before class even started I was anticipating how to drop the class. I signed up for it because I felt like in this day and age any computer help would be good. What the heck was I thinking!!! To have to learn something completely new on top of the function overload in com grad studies... I didn't know if I had the stamina.

The professor got up and introduced himself and I could barley pay attention because I just had to find a way out of this self inflicted torture. Then, he said "if you have no idea what you are doing, what computer programing is and wonder how you are going to make it through the semester... you are in the right class." Then the light bulb went on! "This is a class for dummies not professionals!"

I was just a fraction less neurotic as I walked into each of our Com classes. I was able to apply the same thought from the computer programing class to the graduate program and tell myself that "this is a class for dummies, not professionals!" Now, please don't take offense. I don't think any of my peers are dummies, but I do feel like, for the first time in my academic career, that we are all pretty much on the same playing field.

I have always loved learning but am always slow to pick up on new things. This always left me feeling behind and lesser than my class mates. Oh, how I remember the timed multiplication tables and how I felt so inferior to everyone in my 4th grade class. But once I got a hold of the concept of multiplication, I was making the same time as all the rest of them!

I am so glad that this last week hasn't been a repeat of the 4th grade. I feel like we each have our strengths and not one of us is on their way to finish 100 multiplication problems in less than a minute, but instead we are each going to steadily pace ourselves to the end.

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