Papa Diagne
9/21/23
Assignment 1 final draft
Beware of familiar pressure.
I had fallen victim to familiar pressure. I had two majors in mind after I graduated high school. The first one is computer science because my family, especially my brother since he graduated with a software engineering degree, kept nagging me into doing computer science. The second one is accounting because I love doing math (except for any math after Calculus 1) and accounting fits that criteria. For some reason, I listened to my family instead of myself and went with computer science and instantly regretted it. My teachable moment is to listen to yourself and follow your ambition instead of trying to make your family proud by doing something you don’t want to do or you will regret it and I will explain my reasoning.
in CCNY, you need math to Calculus 3 if you are trying to do any engineering majors? This is the main reason why I switched majors from computer science to accounting and transferred from CCNY to attend Baruch College. During my first semester at CCNY, the only class that I took related to the computer science major was Calculus 1. Due to my arrogant self and thinking that class was going to be easy, I didn’t take the class as seriously as I should have been in the beginning. Due to this and not studying for the test, I failed the first quiz with a score of 55%. Since then, I have studied more than what I usually did and prepared myself to make sure that I don’t let failure happen again. I was not happy to do it but I had to do what I had to do to succeed. I thought I was prepared, I thought I did everything I needed to do to pass. But then the second quiz came around and made me question whether I should keep going. Even after all the studying and hard work, I got another 55%. I chose to stay because I didn’t want the pressure of letting my family down. Afterward, I decided to attend tutoring. Before you start judging me, I wasn’t familiar with tutoring since I had never been tutored in high school or middle school but I was glad I found it since it was so helpful. Since then, I passed every quiz and test, it wasn’t As but a pass is a pass. At the end of the semester, I managed to get a C in the class. Thanks to tutoring, the class was way easier to understand. When it was time to make our new schedule, I added 2 computer science classes with the calc 2 class on my schedule thinking that going to tutoring and studying would help me pass the classes and yet again, life hits me hard.
When the second semester started, the first thing I did was to try to get tutoring for calc 2 and the 2 computer science classes. Underestimating how hard the classes were going to be was the last thing I was going to do. I got the tutoring for math class but at the time, the two computer science classes didn’t have tutoring. The main issue with not having a tutor for one of the computer science classes was that the work given was pretty much reading the chapter and figuring it out yourself. The class was C++, a programming language. This class introduced students to coding. I wasn’t slacking off, I reread the chapter over and over but I just couldn’t understand. When I thought I kept up, the class was further and further ahead of me and the class was like this the whole time. I struggled so much to the point that I missed homework for the elective classes just to make sure I kept up with the class and still couldn’t do it. The other computer science was worse. The class was so bad that I didn’t even know what the class was about while I was there. The class was called discrete math. I don’t remember what that class was about. These classes gave me reasons to leave computer science since they were supposed to be the easiest computer science classes and I was struggling terribly. But in the end, the reason I left was the math. To be honest with you, I have never been this clueless in my life, I felt like an idiot just trying to understand what was going on. The tutoring and countless hours of study didn’t help, and neither did the teacher. She would solve ridiculous problems using methods we have never seen before and expect us to know it. She wouldn’t even give us a quiz after every chapter to help us prepare as the calc 1 professor did. I was struggling with all my computer science-related classes and I didn’t know what to do. What made me realize I was not cut out for computer science was the score on my first exam of calc 1. When I got my score and looked at my 13%, I was done with computer science.
I didn’t care about what my family thought of this because I would have lost my mind if I kept going. I went home and dropped all the classes I had related to computer science and applied to Baruch to pursue accounting since CCNY doesn’t have accounting and got accepted a week later. By far one of the best decisions I had ever made. I don’t have to deal with high-level math that I will most likely not need in the future. Of course, my brother wasn’t too happy about me switching majors since he loves computer science so much but at this point, nobody else’s opinion matters other than my own. This is my first semester taking accounting classes and it’s not complicated at all. Much reading is needed for accounting, but I would rather read than do math. I wished that I listened to myself instead of going with what my family wanted. In the end, I’m trying to teach the reader not to get pressured into doing something they don’t, but also not to force themselves on others and follow their passion.