Taking Computer Science As A Clueless, Logic-less Human Being

First of all, I don't want to stereotype myself. Yes, I'm an English major, but I strongly believe there are plenty of humanities majors out there who are way more capable than I when it comes to subjects such as computer science.

I came into my Elements of Algorithms and Computations class nervous but excited, a mere, young, bright-eyed junior (RIP, I was basically one of the only upperclassmen). I had zero experience with computer science. But, my mom had been a legendary programmer in her day, so who knows? Ignorance is bliss — I had reason to believe that perhaps I had inherited her genes.

Alas, that was not the case.

The entire semester was just one, big struggle bus. At least once a week, a fellow clueless student and I would exchange a message concluding in a minimum of three question marks (accompanied by the occasional exclamation point and "WTF"). Bless Rice for providing the option of Pass/Fail, because my GPA would've taken a huge, unnecessary hit as a result of this class.

Python is tough. It's organized, it's indented, it has its rules, and you've got to be efficient about it. To this day, only a little over a week after completing the final exam for the class (though I say "completing" in the loosest manner possible), I'm still not entirely sure I know what a neural net, nor a for-loop, nor a ... well, I'm blanking on terms to blank on.

Every time we did group exercises in class, I would watch in fascination as a proficient coder whizzed her way through them, muttering to herself as she went, occasionally directing questions about the process toward me and the fellow clueless student, as if we were supposed to know what she was talking about (usually the response would be *vague nodding* "Hmm, that makes sense..."). The end product always clicked in my head — I just didn't know how to get there. I wouldn't have thought to methodically run through the problem that way to reach the solution.

So, when left to my own devices come project/assignment time, which was roughly every other week, I was always in a tizzy week of. I would dream in code, stress about the points while lying in bed, rant about the assignment to anyone who would listen, and work on it during other classes.

Yes, for a Pass/Fail class, I put in maybe twice the work I put in to another class that I actually took for a grade. Sad, right? Some English major I am.

Seriously, I think it just comes down to the fact that I just lack logic — my brain simply does not work that way. It doesn't go in organized lines, in order of highest efficiency; rather, it works its way to the solution in a weird, spirally fashion. Think a deranged ant's path. That's what comes to mind, anyway.

One of my friends told me, half jokingly, "You can do anything if you put your mind to it!" OK sure, theoretically anyone can do anything, but that doesn't mean it's going to be done well. I am not proud of the quality of my code, but I guess I'm proud of the fact that I still worked my butt off on a decent number of those assignments, and genuinely tried to learn even when it became very apparent to me (two weeks in, tops) that this was not my calling. My grade will not be revealed (hint: It's not good enough to take off the Pass/Fail), but I didn't totally botch it.

There's a very high chance that one day I'll have to come back to Python, or maybe some other coding language — perhaps I'll even do so voluntarily. For now, though, I'll breathe a sigh of relief and even do a little dance that COMP 130 is over.

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