Hindsight, as the saying goes, is 20/20. This, among other reasons, is probably why I’m increasingly convinced that I should have talked to someone about my academic problems during my freshman year of college, instead of continuing to take computer science classes that I disliked and, eventually, losing interest in most of my classes.

At the time (has it really been five years?), I believe I wanted to keep a nice scholarship that involved being a computer science major, but in retrospect it wouldn’t have been the end of the world to try living off-campus and (much as I’ve been doing recently) work while only taking classes as I can afford to pay for them.

I distinctly remember, during the first week of class my freshman year, in the computer science class I was taking the professor was talking about Boolean logic, among other things (conversion to and from binary? I don’t remember what else now), and at one point I decided I didn’t like being a computer science major.

Again, in retrospect, I should have gone to the counseling center, or mentioned it to my parents, or talked to a friend, or done almost anything other than what I actually did – continue going to class, not apply myself, eventually get a tutor, and I think I ended the class somewhere in the C range. Lack of study skills aside, at least in the first two weeks or whatever I could have, relatively painlessly, switched to being a chemistry major, or a biology major, or even an undecided major.

Instead, I continued going to classes I disliked, not applying myself, and shortly after the start of the second semester I completely stopped going to most of my classes, because freshman writing, trigonometry, and another programming class failed to interest me. I only went to the first day of the writing class (and another day much later in the semester), and I seem to remember attending trigonometry and the Java class until at least mid-February, after which I believe I stopped attending those classes.

I’m mainly writing and thinking about this right now because the alternative is working on my current writing class, which just seems completely pointless and boring. Maybe it’d be different if I were taking it in a classroom with an interesting teacher, but it’s really hard for me to be interested in anything I find boring (like, for example, freshman writing).

I need to figure out a way to weaken the very strong correlation between my interest in a class and my eventual grade in that class, and if nothing else it’s hard for everything to always be interesting and exciting (as my current job proves).

Tonight I get to work the cash register at work for a full shift. I’m very introverted, and immensely dislike being a cashier to begin with, but Mondays usually aren’t too busy, and as I learned last night I’ll have more help than I originally thought I would. Thankfully, tomorrow I’m back in the kitchen for a short shift, and then I have Wednesday and Friday off, if I remember correctly.