The Road to CS: Opting for a Degree in Computer Science

Was pondering on what I should wrote for my first blog post, and landed on this topic as this is where everything started and how my journey venture into the world of computer science.

Biology

Yep, you didn't read it wrongly, Biology played an important factor in my decision. As a typical science student back in my high school, we have to take 4 core subjects, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Additional Maths. Among these siblings, I absolutely HATE Biology the most, the memorising part has always been a PAIN to me. The animal and plant kingdoms, makes me wonder who even invented those phrases. Cellular respiration, metabolism and enzymes, anatomy of flowering plants, biological molecules, it requires a lot of writing and CHUNKS AND CHUNKS OF INFO.

Studying Biology is like studying cooking recipes from a parallel universe written by dolphins, the ingredients are aquatic, I understood the ingrdients in the shallow water, but the concepts under the deep ocean is the one that got me crazy. Despite my best effort, I was left wondering if its just another complex experiment underwater. Meanwhile, most of my friends find biology to be the easiest among the sciences, they think that its really interesting, I couldn't relate. Biology is just not my taste. There's only 1 chapter in Biology that catches my eye - Human anatomy, how the brains, organs and heart are connected together and form US (Out of the topic, lets get back).

Add Maths

And thats where I realised I am really bad in memorising things and discovered my passion for maths. Add maths has always been my favourite subject during high school, its always fascinating for me to witness different types of algorithms could work together and solve that one specific problem. While our lecturer was explaining biology concepts, I would start to solve math problems during class. Geometry, Differentiation, Integration, Combinatorics - they all became a part of my form 4 and 5 high school life.

Tackling mathematical problems feels like overcoming a challenge, makes one mistake, and it's back on to the drawing board. You could never learn finish mathematics, the concepts are boundless, theres always an infinite number to explore. Sin, cos, tan these 3 cousins are way better than learning chlorophyll, chloroplast and chromosome. It always amazes me how x, y and z place the last in the series of alphabets are the ones who conquer the maths world. A meme perfectly captured this:

Computer Science

Before deciding on my university course, I initially thought of pursuing math related degree. Believe it or not, I never picture myself majoring in a computer science field. Initially I thought of computer science as merely delving into learning software and hardware stuff. This proves me wrong, It wasn't until I found out that programming has a lot related to mathemetics and problem solving skills, thats when I made the decision to pursue computer science. Linear Algebra, Calculus, Discrete Mathematics are some of the mighty backbones behind computer science. And here I am, struggling with sleep everyday. Lastly, a meme that all computer science student could relate :)