Michael Yu
Plano, TX
Class of 2012
The first experience I had with computers was in elementary school when we were made to learn how to type. I don't remember exactly what kind of computer we used, but it was one of those old ones with the floppy disks. Since then I've used mainly PCs, though I did have one brief, guilt-ridden affair with a mac.
I'm pretty much dependent on computers. I use them to check up on the news, to communicate with friends/family, to play games, to do homework, to waste time, etc. But it was only after I took an AP computer science course in high school that I realized that I could turn my addiction into a livelihood. I'm not exactly sure what a computer scientist does, but I imagine it probably involves some amount of designing/developing software.
I think my worst programming experience was the time I competed in a team programming competition in high school. I personally like to take my time while coding, so having to write code under extreme time pressure while everyone on your team is freaking out and yelling at each other was just horrible. I think the worst programming project I've ever had to do was also in high school. Early in CompSci 1 our teacher made us do a project where we had to print some text with a certain format (it was to teach us how to use the system.out.print methods). We had to manually type in and format at least a full page worth of text, it was extremely boring and tedious.
I definitely see myself continuing to play video games, surfing the web, and otherwise wasting my life on the computer. But hopefully as I learn more about computer science I'll also be able to do more interesting and productive things with computers. For one I'll like to get better at making websites.