#forthatchallenge

Nearing the end of my grade 12 senior year, I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life, after having chosen and accepted an offer from U of T Life Sciences. To be completely honest, I had no idea what the field of life sciences would be like, nor what I wanted to do with it. It also had something to do with the stereotypical predilection that asian parents always dream about their kids becoming a doctor. After the completion of first year of post-secondary studies, I felt exhausted and miserable. Lost and unmotivated, I took some time off from school and went to various places in China, to find the entrepreneurial side of myself; I wanted to start a contemporary clothing brand. Although it received appraisal from mentors and surrounding peers, my father halted my hot headed rush suggesting that I should probably complete my post-secondary studies before doing anything serious. Come to think of it, it was a good idea that I came back to school, just because of the resources available at my disposal. I’m not giving up on the start-up, though. Everything here is to get me closer to it. I think that all near-future businesses will require some kind of computer knowledge. You don’t have to know everything, but just some of it, or most of it, thus I’ve made up my mind on enrolling in programming courses, and most likely, a computer science program. Some kids decide to try out the techie things in high school by choosing some kind of computer-related elective course, but that wasn’t my case. High school AP classes sucked. Although I’ve done some reading and studies on the Python language, I decided to play it safe and go with CSC104. As this course describes, I’d like to start “computational thinking”, and I hope it gives me a smooth introduction to the programming side of things.

Upon reading that biography of Elon Musk, my interpretation of programming meant transforming the world into one’s playground with infinite possibilities (like, who knew we were going to get life-size toy cars on the roads?). I can see that the course is trying to deliver the foundational knowledge about programming, before letting us loose and do crazy things. Therefore, although I find the course advancing in an incremental pace, I’m finely accepting that it’s just the beginning. There’s nothing that really stood out to me, yet, and I find the difficulty of the course is just right (coming from someone with zero programming background).

The quizzes are getting straight to the point and align well with the materials taught, although that quiz from Week 2 was especially loopy. The weekly exercises help a lot when I’m studying for the quizzes. I usually try everything that’s on it, and apply old concepts to them, just to make sure, and I’m all ready. I’m especially interested in web designs, program designs, as well as AI interactions.