It really started in my junior year of high school, when I took my first CS class. I dropped a cappella for an Intro to Computer Programming course, which felt like a real risk at the time. I was leaving a class I loved, full of friends, for one where I knew nobody and nothing. It ended up changing the direction of my life in a pretty meaningful way. I recall being oddly excited to code in BlueJ, learning basic concepts such as if statements, for loops, and object-oriented programming, even though the environment itself was pretty rough in retrospect. It was honestly the only class I actually looked forward to, and it was where I first developed a real passion for coding.

Then senior year rolled around, and I took AP Computer Science. At the same time, I still thought I might study chemistry in college because I genuinely enjoyed it and had spent a lot of time with it. Taking both classes side by side made things pretty clear. I honestly realized I did not enjoy chemistry at a higher level through that class experience. At the same time, I loved my computer science experience, especially the process of solving problems and building things from scratch. What really sealed the deal was talking to a computer science student at Amherst while I was being recruited. It was a really good conversation, and it felt like this was the kind of person I wanted to be around in college.

Throughout most of this journey, computer science just made sense to me. It was the one subject where I felt like I had a strong intuition for how things worked, and my curiosity naturally pushed me to keep learning more. That carried me pretty far until I took data structures in my sophomore year. For a mix of reasons, I found the class disengaging, and I struggled to stay motivated by the way it was taught. The following semester was Systems, which made things even clearer. I realized pretty quickly that low-level systems work was not where I did my best work. I still remember getting a C+ on one of my projects, and the first line of feedback was simply, “Good job.” That moment stuck with me, and it was when I knew this was definitely not the path for me.

By the end of my sophomore year, which was honestly the hardest year of my life up to that point, I was at a crossroads. I could either stick it out with computer science or switch to psychology and potentially pursue something like finance. I loved psychology, but I really did not like the idea of going into finance, so I decided to stay with computer science. I am very glad I did. The next two years were genuinely enjoyable for the most part, even if parts of the curriculum were not my favorite. I took algorithms and databases, which felt like my first exposure to more practical, end-to-end programming. Then I studied abroad in Copenhagen and took game development, which is still my favorite class I have ever taken, largely because of the people, the projects, and the experiences we shared outside the classroom. I wrapped up my time at Amherst with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, where I ended up building two separate game engines for Othello, which was one of the most rewarding projects I worked on in college.

This trek through the computer science degree taught me a few important things about myself. First, I like building things way more than I like learning things in the abstract. I always preferred working on projects and collaborating with others over studying theory or taking exams, even though that stuff obviously matters. I learned far more about how computing actually works by doing, breaking things, and fixing them than I ever did by sitting and listening. I respect the importance of fundamentals, but I have learned that I am most effective when theory connects directly to something tangible.

Second, and this took some time to realize, I tend to do well when I am taking ownership of technical projects. I noticed that when decisions were unclear or overly deferred, projects often stalled or drifted. When I stepped in, made decisions, and matched people to tasks based on their strengths, projects tended to move faster and turn out better. I also learned to be honest about my own limits. For example, during a database project, I delegated the web app for our leaderboard to teammates who were better suited for it and focused on building the backend ETL pipeline instead. That balance ended up working really well.

Third, and maybe most importantly, I genuinely enjoy the people in this space. Most of my college friends were not computer science majors, largely because I was also playing football, but I consistently had good experiences with people who were genuinely curious about building and learning technology. The conversations were more fun, the banter was better, and I felt more at home socially. That surprised me the most during my time in Copenhagen, where many of my closest friends were CS majors, and I ended up having way more fun with them, both in and out of class, than I expected.

At this point, I mostly just try to put myself in situations where I get to build things and learn by doing. I am drawn to work where I can move quickly, see what breaks, and improve it over time. I do not have everything figured out, but I know I enjoy taking ownership of problems and working with people who care about what they are building. That has been the most consistent signal for me so far, and it is what I am continuing to lean into.