100%.
There are so many things that you can read or theorize about for years, in depth -- that end up still being very different once you actually do them. Just gotta try stuff.
There are so many things that you can read or theorize about for years, in depth -- that end up still being very different once you actually do them. Just gotta try stuff.
1. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer through most of college. I took tons of law-related courses, did a few internships, and then realized I strongly disliked actually doing it once I got my first job in the field. Thankfully, I figured it out before going to law school.
2. I studied abroad in Kenya basically on a whim. I realized my penultimate semester of college that I’d managed to get all my graduation requirements done a semester early and somehow not noticed, and decided I’d take the last semester to have a little adventure. It turned out to be one of the best things I’ve ever done.
3. At the start of lockdown in 2020, I took CS50 basically because I was bored and a friend was doing it. I had never even considered studying CS before that point, and now here I am getting my ducks in a row to do an OSU post-bacc.
I suppose the throughline here is that life is full of unknown unknowns, and unknown unknowns, by definition, aren’t something you can think about and factor into your decision-making process. Just like you said — sometimes you just gotta try stuff.
I took CS50 when it was probably very different (Brian Kernighan, the creator of C, teaching C)
Roughly, I ended up as a Chair of a Masters in IT program. Not doing that part anymore, but still a full time non-tenure teaching professor. (What technically, as in according to the rules of academia, qualifies me for all this, is the law degree. Weird. I'll take it!