I have had many hobbies. I have tried to make so many of them my “thing” for so long. I learned to use various software such as Adobe Flash and Adobe After Effects to create animations made of many many drawings. But I stopped after I lost interest. I created cartoons and drawings of my favorite characters from various media using drawing programs like Clip Studio, Krita, and Adobe Illustrator. But I got sick of looking at my mediocre drawings and comparing them to pros on the internet. I used my prior experience from Adobe After Effects and applied it to Adobe Premiere to create cool effects in various video editing projects I did in high school. But that never got anywhere. I took at graphics design course during high school and even created a logo for a food truck. But I quickly realized that graphic design wasn’t my thing. I tried to pour many many hours into the competitive shooter game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) in hopes of becoming a professional player one day. But the time commitment for such an endeavor was simply too great for me to pursue while keeping up with my academics. Lastly, ever since I was in the first grade, I played the piano. I loved it so much that I took on band from middle school throughout all of high school, picking up the clarinet and bass clarinet. I took my music journey far thinking that I would play and create music for the rest of my life. But over time, my experience with music grew sour with the countless hours of practice I committed with little to no progress or growth, and I had forgotten the reason I started playing music in the first place- because I simply enjoyed it. Then, I graduated from high school returned the school’s clarinet and bass clarinet, laid the dust cloth on my keyboard, and closed the lid on my upright piano for the final time.
And yet, despite so many failed attempts at trying to pursue some hobby, I don’t regret it one bit. I don’t regret having wasted so much time doing things that I would ultimately quit and never come back to. I wouldn’t even use the word “waste” to describe it.
My experiences have taught me many things, and thanks to them, today I have basic knowledge of how to use video editors and drawing programs, play and create music, and my aim in shooter games got quite good. But the most crucial thing I learned is, surprisingly, how to learn. How to learn a new concept. How to learn to use a new software or piece of equipment. The one constant thing I was doing while I was picking up all these different experiences was learning something new. Each time I picked something up, I would learn it faster than I had the previous thing. Not only that, but in my music career, I would be constantly learning and practicing new pieces, which gave me further practice in learning.
This, I believe, is a skill you can apply anywhere in life. And it is definitely applicable in the world of computer science. Picking computer science as my college major seriously had no meaning to it- I picked it simply because it was a growing, lucrative field. I had no intention of going back to something I had abandoned prior to pursue a degree for and do a living. But despite knowing nothing about coding, programming or software development, I entered the world of computer science confidently, knowing there is always a place to apply my ability to learn something new. As I learn more about programming and software development, I believe my experience in picking up new hobbies will propel me further and boost my abilities.