Why I Chose Computer Science

Growing up, I had always dreaded the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I was generally a very indecisive person and, on top of that, I believed that answering such a question meant that I had to follow through. If I said I wanted to be a doctor, I had to go to medical school and become an accomplished surgeon. As a result, I danced around the question a lot whenever it came up, responding with vague statements and a sheepish smile. It wasn’t my fault; I found everything interesting. From the patterns in math to the deep analyses in English, I found it very tough to choose one specific subject to delve into when there were so many that fascinated me.

I took my first programming class in high school, and found it interesting in the same way I found everything else interesting. I couldn’t see myself as a programmer, per se, but I still thought the subject was pretty cool. As someone who likes the logic of math, an introduction to computer programming was naturally captivating to me.

As I explored the world of computer science further, however, I got glimpses of how vast its applications are. With CS knowledge, I could create a program to help doctors with medical diagnoses, improve speech-recognition softwares for people who have hearing disabilities, or even employ robots to help the environment like this pollution detection robot (https://www.epfl.ch/labs/biorob/research/amphibious/envirobot/).

Although I am still unsure of what exactly I want to do with computer science, I know I’ll have the freedom to choose, as well as the knowledge to create algorithms to further the causes that matter to me.

-Meera Kumar