Find a career that makes you feel alive. That was the phrase that echoed throughout my childhood home ever since that time I told my mom I wanted to be a Storm Trooper when I grew up. It seems silly to want to be a Storm Trooper but at least it was something I wanted to do. In the 18 years I have spent on this Earth, I've never seen my dad as happy as when he finally moved out of the Bay Area to Montana and started spending his mornings watching the sunsets rather than commuting to the valley. Maybe being a Storm Trooper wouldn't have made my dad feel alive but staring at endless lines of code every day certainly didn't fill him with the warmth of a rising sun over a calm lake. That made me really think about what is my modern-day Storm Trooper dream. I don't think my four-year-old self ever contemplated how being a stormtrooper would require entirely surrendering my identity because that is exactly contrary to what makes me feel alive. To me, being alive is being a maverick. It's feeling the air rush past my face as I go 70 mph on skis. It's dancing and spinning in circles 20 feet above the water wearing a Flyboard. It's plucking a guitar chord and feeling it resonate in my ears.
Everyone asks me why I'm studying physics when I'm clearly so into music. I could always find reasons to rationalize it. I find the sciences to be just as creative as the humanities and arts. They inspire just as much curiosity in me. Knowing a bunch of physics makes me feel really intelligent. But I've always ignored the one factor that is perhaps most important. (I literally just realized this right now as I'm writing this so even if I don't get into this intro sem, I'm thankful for this opportunity). Music is what makes me feel alive. It makes me feel. That's so important that I can't believe I've never thought about it before. I would be letting down my mom if I didn't study something that made me feel alive. More importantly, I would be letting down my four-year-old self if I didn't become a Storm Trooper (well not literally a stormtrooper but my modern-day Storm Trooper). The most important thing I've learned from my dad is that I shouldn't wait until I'm 55 to start living. I'm really interested in this intro sem because I care deeply about happiness. I would say Zen Buddhism is the ideology that I've aligned with most over the past year, but the one thing that I can't come to terms with is the abandonment of desire. I desire to ski off cliffs not because it means anything but because it means everything. Feeling alive is everything. I love thinking and I love being happy, so why not combine the two and start thinking about happiness?
This lecture series has so far been a stark reminder of the question sitting at the back of my mind: STEM or humanities, left brain or right brain, logical or emotional? I’ve always seen myself as sort of the intersection between those two spheres, that I could swing either way if I wanted to. And I still think that’s true for the most part but for a different reason. Now I simply avoid drawing such a hard line between them in the first place. To me, the humanities and STEM are both ways of learning about the universe but they each have their own set of methods to do so. I think in many ways STEM is highly creative and the humanities can be deeply logical as well.
That said, I still feel like I would be dissatisfied in a major or career that focuses on only one part of my brain. I can see myself most in a field that crosses the boundaries between the human and objective elements of life. Something that looks like architecture is what I’m talking about. I’m not particularly interested in architecture, but it is exactly what I am describing in terms of a crossover between the two “sides” of the brain. It is inherently a form of art. It is designing structures for humans to live in, look at, and be a part of. It’s being a builder of communities. But it’s also highly logical. It requires precise geometry and a deep understanding of structural engineering. It takes into account green design and material science for efficient buildings.
In many ways, architecture is the intersection between concrete science and the imagination which is what I love about it. As I said, I’m not sure if I would like to be an architect, but something like it is what I’m looking for.
Over the past quarter, I’ve thought a lot about what I want to spend my life doing. I haven’t found an answer yet, I’m not even close, but I think I have realized some things about myself. Originally, coming here I was looking for any chance I could get to not do a STEM major because at this point it seems cliche to major in engineering. I especially thought that I would never do CS in my life because that would be “selling out”. Now I realize that none of that matters. The only thing that matters is what will make me happy and fulfilled for the rest of my life. And I can even change fields somewhere down the line as well.
Realizing this made me look again at CS with a different perspective. I realized that CS might be the closest thing to what I enjoy doing out of any major here. It’s pure problem solving and working out puzzles. That’s like dopamine for my extremely logical brain. And I need art in my life too, but I’ve realized that without logic and puzzles I feel very ungrounded. It feels like my skills and interests are very blurry and undefined. I love the structure that CS gives.
A lot of this realization came as a result of a conversation I just had with my dad. He told me about how exciting it was for him to do programming during his time at Stanford. He talked about how before there was even a CS undergrad major, he majored in EE, and how before there were personal computers, everyone would have to write their code out on paper and wait in line at the library to try it out on the computer there. Maybe I’ll find something else that excites me as well, but I’ve realized that I shouldn’t listen to people telling me to not study CS because it’s “selling out” when people obviously have vastly different interests. Just because CS isn’t for one person doesn’t mean it’s not for me.