College Unreading

In college, we're assigned a mountain of reading, even in the science and engineering courses. Said reading material is usually nonessential, and it's quite possible to get through class without spending too much time on them, if at all. After all, we're graded by our assignments and exams, not the number of pages we've read. But as with any subject, skimping on the reading will translate to an inferior learning experience.

One such course for me was COS217, the C systems programming course. There were several recommended textbooks at the bookstore [1]; of course, I read virtually none of them, pressured by the need to complete essential tasks for both this class and others. As with most anything, not being able to devote one's full attention to the subject proved to be inefficient. I passed the course with marginally acceptable grades, and was mildly traumatized by the experience. It would be the last CS course I would take in my life [2].

Fast forward to 2012, seven and a half years after my last CS course. I find myself in the high tech sector, as I had always intended, but woefully deficient in many of the technical areas that I now wish I had taken the time to master. I perform my duties well, but well isn't good enough for my purposes and aspirations. I feel a need to understand the basics and the fundamentals; a desire that I haven't felt for quite a few years now.

I must shamefully admit that for much of my academic life, my so called learning was driven by a duty to learn rather than a desire to learn. But now that I don't have to learn, I find myself grasping at the first threads of my desire to learn for the first time in perhaps over a decade.

Seven and a half years later, I am reading the books that I never read in college [1]. This blog was written in emacs, an editor that I simply couldn't stand using back in the Fall of 2004 [3].

Thing are changing for me, slowly, surely, hopefully for the better.

[1] The Practice of Programming, The UNIX Programming Environment, and Programming with GNU Software

[2] I should mention that our Lecturer, Bob Dondero, is a fantastic teacher who is truly the anchor of CS instruction in the department.

[3] I had previously used TextWrangler for my blogging purposes. I must say though, the Mac Keyboard isn't particularly conducive to emacs shortcuts, so I think I'll have to remap them soon.