This will be going up onto a tech blog with my name on it and could reflect badly for my reputation in the tech industry so hit me hard with criticisms if you can. It is meant to generate views as much as be highly reputable link others can share.
Everyone hears this life advice at least one million times
in high school. They say if you don’t know what you’re going to do in college,
just “follow your passion.” It is sort of the blanket statement to handle all
the children’s problems as the adults handle adulting.
It’s so bad that when I say I didn’t have a passion going into college, I run
the risk of every employer dooming me to a life of mediocrity but I say nay to
them anyway. See, I am a very brave man when I state that when I went to college I was not passionate about Computer Science.
In fact, when I went to college my main concern was cash money *GASP*. These
are the words that summon fear among the greatest of conformists.
What is everyone in such a rush for anyway? In pre K they
start asking children what they want to be when they grow up. Yes, they’re
asking children things they know nothing about. They know firefighters are
heroes but how can they know they want to be one before they can grasp basic
functioning of their hands? But maybe they’re just asking because kids are
cute. The point is when kids get pimply and not so cute anymore the intent of
the question is more along the lines of digging up this fantasy that will turn
them into the next Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs or *insert your favorite person
here*.
This is a crazy Idea but what if we just aren’t born with a
predestined passion. That all of these people who say they have a passion since
they were born are really just fooling themselves in an attempt to be happy or extraordinary?
We don’t like to talk about this subject because there doesn’t really seem to
be an answer if this is false. Why just throw salt on people’s wounds by
telling them they are just passionless creatures?
You know those types of quotes you yawn at because they
attempt to be artsy by defining some abstract and obscure message you can only
recognize after you experienced it first hand? Don’t you hate those? Well here
it is; "Life isn't about
finding yourself, it's about creating yourself" [4].
One of my horrible mistakes was thinking I should be more
interested when I should have been cultivating my passion instead. That is instead
of following this mythical creature of passion that we are apparently born with
I should have been developing my skill
because even the little fraction I have learned about Computer Science has made
me more interested in it. Perhaps, passion isn’t actually free but is
something we have to work very hard to get?
I learned in college that cultivating this passion about
something requires that you pick up a skill and fail to change it so many times
that you can appreciate and comprehend its complexity. This does not mean to
learn a subject inside and out, it means trying to change it and believe it or not this comes after you’ve
learned and studied all you can about it.
An interesting dilemma in Computer Science is what we refer
to as FizzBuzz problems and they are practically made for PhD professors who fail at even the simplest tasks like
telling a computer to count from 1 to 10 in a programming language on their
resume[2]. For Non-Tech Savy people this is the equivalent of a professor with
a PhD in math to not know how to do long
division.
The point is that just learning the ins and outs of the
profession is not enough to even get more interested, it is not enough to even be a professional let alone cultivate a
passion for the skill. In skill acquisition, you learn the basics of the skill
like these PhD professors did and after you realize you barely know anything at
all, you practice and hone your craft to becoming an expert. In skill
acquisition practicing is actually required to even do anything in the
skill and apparently some people don't understand that at all. It’s like learning
everything there is too know about hula hooping and not ever actually hula
hooping. It’s weird that these professionals cannot do the basic tasks, huh?
How long does it actually take to become what we think PhD’s
know? Somewhere along 10,000 hours of practicing and honing the craft [3]. Before
you freak out 10,000 hours is simply the point when practice and ability happen
too asymptote. It doesn’t mean it takes 10,000 hours to become passionate, it'll happen along the way.
And this post is actually not even about terminology or
picking on so called experts in the Computer Science field at all. It’s not
about asserting who is passionate and who is not. It is about students being
pressured into thinking that they should be passionate and in turn fooling
themselves or giving up on a practice because they don't meet these criteria. Why
do we keep insinuating by innuendo that college is only for the type of people
who’ve are already been passionate? Why do we think that students who aren’t
passionate are somehow, behind? It's no
wonder that 50 to 70% of students change their major at least one time in
college [2]. Don’t you think that might have something to do with paranoia because
you keep telling them there is something wrong with them?
The fact is, that while no study or conclusive evidence has proven that passion is cultivated, it is something that I've experienced first hand and something that you too will have to experience first hand. That may seem that it is all talk and no substance. It is in a way but it can actually be tested by simply trying it. After you sunk some time into a subject by learning and practicing it, simply observe whether or not you are more interested in it. And don't think a couple of months is enough here; the first couple of months actually terrible because you have to learn alot of stuff. If you are even a little more interested, then what makes you think that this will change the more time that you put in?
If you want to find passion in your life, spend 10,000 hours
in a skill, any skill. Just stick to one skill and take it wherever it takes
you. It is that simple. You’ll find that passion by following its intellectual
pursuit. And stop changing your major.
Of course, if you don’t believe me then you can take solace
in the fact that until you took the time to spend 10,000 hours learning that
skill, there is no way you can comprehend it in all its entirety. And how could you possibly be passionate
about something you cannot understand?
1. http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-...
2. http://sites.laverne.edu/careers/what-can-i-do-wit...
3. http://aubreydaniels.com/pmezine/expert-performanc...
4. Quote suggested by user @pretzelstick in my rough draft blog on topic. quote is by George Bernard
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