A Simpler Life

As a computer science major in college, I deal with information a lot. My classes daily unload new knowledge into me, which I am expected to retain (at least until the final exam). Beyond that, I spend a lot of time on the computer, doing homework, playing games, or socializing online. Over the past few months I've started to feel a bit overwhelmed by all this information being pumped into my mind on a daily basis.

Part of me has begun longing for simpler times. It's a recurrence of a desire that's been in me for a while. Not too long ago I ran across a website that collects American TV sign-offs, which were played when a TV station shut down for the night. That's right, TV stations used to shut down. I don't remember them, but boy do they bring back nostalgia of simpler times, before information and the Internet dominated.

Another part of me thinks back to the Middle Ages. Back then, there weren't nearly as many possibilities and media as there is nowadays. Your collection of friends was limited to who was in your village. Long-distance friendships were probably maintained by sparse meetings. There weren't hundreds of different jobs you could take. And while I certainly wouldn't want to live in the Medieval times, there's something... quaint about the comparatively simple lifestyle they had. You worked, you dined with the family, and on Sundays the entire village gathered for Mass.

I've spent a lot of time musing on what it is that I desire. My thoughts have led me to a few things actually.

First, I miss the lack of information overload. You know how Facebook has that mini-feed in the upper right corner of the screen? It shows in real time what your friends are doing. Honestly it just clutters the screen with a distracting moving object. I hid it with the online friends list, and I've felt better about it since then. I still check once in a while but I'm not being spammed with information. Media is another big thing for me. I think the biggest problem is the Internet. There's so much information available that I take in on a daily basis. I don't think the mind is supposed to have so much dumped into it on a daily basis.

Because of all this, I have learned about so many systems of thought and ways of life that it's really caused some internal confusion. I feel like there are too many things that have my interest, too much I want to know about. Every time I learn about something, there becomes more I am curious about. Before the days of the Internet, we couldn't satisfy every curiosity that we had. Now we can. Perhaps my desire is to limit the information dumped into me. Stick to the things that interest me, and stay out of other stuff. To some this might seem to be a call to ignorance. Perhaps it is. Not trying to understand everything perfectly would lead to me - gasp - being wrong about things! Yet as I've seen, we humans are wrong about many things, and still we've survived.

The second thing is genuine friendships. It's so weird how I could be friends with someone who lives a thousand miles away, yet never say a word to my next door neighbor. Sites like Facebook and Twitter provide us all sorts of means of staying in touch. Yet it seems that people are more depressed and lonely than before. Why is that? I would wager it's because we've picked up a method of socializing that isn't natural to us. We're not built to have friendships with people on a screen or a text box. We're designed for person-to-person interaction. It's almost embarrassing how infrequently I see the people I consider my closest friends in real life. While a good, long chat on Facebook is satisfying for me, there's something quaint about hanging out with someone in real life and bantering.

Third, there is the matter of planning. I work best and feel the most at ease when I have things planned out and organized. It makes it easier to make decisions and get stuff done. One of the biggest blocks in my daily life is when I don't know what I should do next, or I don't know how to do something. This sort of ties in with my first point, where possibilities were more limited back in the day. It meant less distractions and (hopefully) somewhat clearer ideas of what one was going to do in the future. Back in the past if you needed help you would ask for it. That's something hard for me. I prefer to do stuff alone, figure it out with my own brainpower. Which is kind of foolish because a problem that I might stress over for hours could be figured out in mere moments by someone with better expertise than myself.

So, hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to have this "simpler" life, what kind of things would I do? I think the number one change would be connectivity brought on by the Internet. The Internet becomes a novelty for me. I use it for school, but not much else. Perhaps in the evening I would give myself a chance to browse a bit. I certainly wouldn't spend forever on sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This would probably have the effect of clearing my mind out a lot. I would be able to focus on the specific things I like or need to do - school, writing, gaming, etc. I would still use it, of course, but this time to pursue my interests. I feel like the freedom from excess information in the past allowed people to better specialize in things. Another thing I'd do is try to spend more quality time with those around me. To be honest, I won't talk to most of the people I've run across in college after I graduate. Most friendships tend to be, by nature, transitory. Life just happens. I would also look for help more. College provides all kinds of support systems that I would do well to take advantage of.

Motivation for College

For as long as I can remember, I always knew I was going to college one day. It was never really a question. My earliest memories of report cards comes from elementary school where I was consistently an A student. This continued all the way through high school, where my grades were high. I graduated high school ranked 3rd in a class of 249. Community college was no different, as I graduated with a 3.95 GPA. Academics were always a strong point for me.

When I transferred to Kansas State, I found things had become more difficult. The level of thinking, the sheer number of hours that was necessary to devote, all these things hurt. It's still something I have trouble with, because I'm stubborn. Recently I've begun feeling like I'm running on empty in things. To keep going, I think I need to remember my motivations.

Why College? Why Computer Science?

I don't think my parents ever pressured me into attending college. If I had decided not to take the college route, I don't think they would have held it against me. I have heard many people say college is a waste of time and money. Perhaps they are right, but I likely will not know until after I am finished with it. I am inclined to think that attending college was mainly my own choice, although perhaps I was influenced by the school system encouraging it.

I don't consider myself a computer person. In other words, I don't know much about the intricacies of how computers work. In theory I could find out the information needed to build a desktop of my own, but I have no desire to do it. I consider myself a programmer. Someone who takes ideas and instructions, and turns them into code. My passion for coding started when I was about 11 or 12, and I really latched onto it after I graduated high school. Being a programmer requires a degree of critical thinking skills that I am blessed enough to have. The title I am likely to adopt when I get a programming job is "software engineer." Programmers are in high demand in a world where computers predominate. It also pays very well. So there is this economic reason for college. A Bachelor's degree makes it more likely I will get a well-paying job somewhere. College is also where my programmer skills are being developed and refined. My skills are not as developed as they could be, even though I'm a senior. In college I have learned things I probably would never learn using online resources. I never even heard of a "data structure" before university!

Most of my life, I'd say I have lived in the lower middle class bracket. Enough to pay the bills, but not always much else. To a degree, this has been good for me. I have picked up a sort of utilitarian mindset with material possessions - if it doesn't have a useful function, I probably do not need it. I have no aspirations of living in a big old mansion by the lake. The Mercedes Benz does not appeal to me. That said... lower middle class is a very wearisome place to be for years on end. It's not something I want to have as part of my life. During the first few years following college I likely will remain in that economic bracket simply because I won't have that big a paycheck. But it is my dream to have an income that allows for a more comfortable life. Sort of my aim is to have a nice house in a safe, quiet neighborhood. If on the off chance I do become more wealthy than what I really need, I foresee myself donating to church ministries, or perhaps things like ChildFund. I might also try to endow scholarships.

So that is my goal. In the meanwhile I need something to keep me going. One of the biggest motivators is me thinking about the goal. Remembering that all of this is happening for a purpose: to graduate and get myself going in life. Doing so requires action now, and it serves as a great incentive.

What Breaks Motivation?

Of course, staying motivated can be hard in a college setting. There are plenty of times over the past three semesters I have questioned why I keep going, or why I'm not wanting to keep at it. What are the things that quell my motivation?

1. Lack of organization: If I don't know what I'm doing, it can be hard for me to find the energy to set up a plan. There might be too many things I need to do. Or I may not have all the items I need for something.

2. Distractions: Internet. People. If my energy is sapped by these things, or if they're causing my attention to be pulled in several directions, my motivation is spent.

3. Not understanding something: L. Ron Hubbard wrote in Dianetics (yes, I've read it) that confusion can result from misunderstanding a single word. Regardless of one's opinion of Hubbard's works, this sentence is true. If I fail to grasp one concept, everything else can be very confusing. And when everything escapes me, I feel no desire to keep going.

4. Impatience: I hate when I can't understand things right away, nor can I get things done in under an hours. But dangit, when stuff takes days' of work I get impatient. I just want to have something done and over. I want to grasp it after the first few tries.

5. Loss of direction: This is a big one. Although I plan in the long-term, generally I am more short-sighted. Getting caught up in the details of life, it's easy for me to forget why I'm doing this, and what I am working toward. I'm not doing this for graduation's sake; I'm doing this for the life I begin after college. The idea of finishing college and starting my life provides a sudden boost of motivation for me. When I lose sight of that, I lose motivation.

6. Lack of support: When I start to feel down or overwhelmed, I need people I can go to for help. Unfortunately I don't always feel like I have that. So I end up bearing my frustration in silence, and this has a habit of ruining the rest of the day. I also don't often have people to tell me I'm doing a good job, or encouraging me to press forward, or keeping me accountable to my schoolwork.

7. No reward: I might put hours and days into something, then instead of any relief or good grade I just have another assignment to do. When there's no end in sight I am inclined to get disgruntled.

I Want... an Office

This is one of those more random thoughts I felt like sharing.

Over the past few days I have been using the study rooms in the dorm building's basement to get away from everything and focus more on my schoolwork. There are mainly two rooms that I've been used. One is pretty small and seems more like an afterthought. As if the architects of the building said "Hey we have this little space right here. I guess we can make it a room." It has a couple tables and chairs, but no air conditioning system. The other room has three tables, three chairs, and a significant amount of the space is taken up with weightlifting equipment. There's also a window and air conditioning system.

I've spent several hours out of the day in these rooms. The doors lock from the outside so while I can get out, nobody without a key can get inside. These rooms don't have clocks on the walls, which for me causes the sense of time to disappear. At one point I was in one of the rooms until about 10 pm. Having a room to myself for an extended period of time with no distractions, complete solitude... it felt really good. A nice little place where I can be by myself.

This invoked a sort of silly pipe-dream desire I've had since last year. I would make the perfect bureaucrat because I like the idea of having my own office. There's just something about having a work space that is solely mine that appeals to me. I could see myself becoming a TA because not only would it likely give me a work space, I could also help people learn. If I weren't going to be a programmer or minister, chances are good I'd be a professor. Even if that would require like three more years of college and doing a bunch of stuff I'd have no interest in. And you can bet I would be a computer science professor.

Of course in reality I don't have an office to call my own, but I do have the next best thing, a dorm room. 50% of it is mine for the school year unless one of us moves out. I could sort of make this into an office space! My desk has a few basic office items - a laptop, clock, and printer. I could perhaps try to organize my books and accessories a little more since things get messy kinda quickly. Part of me would like to go one step further and post a list of classes that I'm good with that people can come see me for help with. I don't think I'd mind being a tutor very much. Unfortunately my amount of free time is quite limited this semester. Maybe next semester.