A Loss of Interest

I don’t want to spend money to get bored. I want to have someone give me money to be bored.

That’s how I feel right now. It’s my second first year and fifth year at Dalhousie University, having already graduated once before. This time around I decided to dip my brain into the bubbling vat of Computer Science, and I find myself overwhelmed with the juices of boredom. I already find myself not only tired of it, but disliking it, at least to the extent of having already dropped Calculus a month before: a subject I had otherwise no interest in other than fulfilling a mandatory credit. I hadn’t taken any mathematics course for over four years. So I ask myself two months prior: what the flying fuck were you thinking? And now that I find myself two months into the first year of Computer Science, I’m starting to regret taking out that sizable student loan, as well as wanting to find a full time job so that I can start writing in my free time instead of being depressed and doing mundane and often difficult assignments.

Two months ago I was thinking “wouldn’t it be great to get a job in the video games industry?” And I thought the only way to do this was to obtain a degree in Computer Science. After all, the mediocre local studios often call for people with a degree in Computer Science, programmer or not. I didn’t want to become a programmer. I’ve heard way too many horror stories about the position from relatives, friends, and industry insiders; working too many hours, tyrant production leaders, lack of sleep, and underpaid salaries are just some of the many perks I’ve read about. So why did I take Computer Science? Well, I guess it would have, kind of, maybe guarantee me a job in any industry. But I don’t think I was prepared to witness just how dreadfully bored I would get in just my first month. I can see it’s a good degree to have, but I find myself just more and more disinterested in obtaining an education that requires me to write countless lines of code rather than beautifully constructed sentences.

I guess I got motivated to write this after leaving my dreadfully boring Computer Science class one dreary Monday afternoon. The ghastly and creepy professor, however nice and thoughtful he may be (he gave me a startling “good morning” when the class started at 12:30PM), went on about how we were only six weeks away from the end of the course. I found myself thinking “…dear God, really? Six more weeks of unadulterated shit that I’ll find myself not giving a single damn about?” I could barely keep in the sound of my grinding teeth. I was just frustrated as hell because this was false advertising: I didn’t think I’d have to sell my soul to the demons of boredom in order to have a completely boring and math-orientated desk job. Screw that.

And it doesn’t help that I take a completely demoralizing class in Astronomy. Again the professor, as wonderful as he is, is slowly—but surely—taking the bedazzling romanticism out of the great wonders of the universe and turning it into a hatred of 11^th grade physics equations. This program is just sapping me of any creativity I had managed to muster in my four year English degree. It’s maddening to see my line of thinking will inevitably turn into mush if I keep on doing this path. I already feel a loss of critical thinking, just because I’m temporarily bound to a mode of thought that just throws everything I knew beforehand out the window.

The only shining light of redemption is my Computer Ethics class. It encourages writing, to a certain extent. I decided to do the first assignment I had missed (because I joined the class late) on teabagging in Halo. I thought it was an interesting bit, funny even, though the subject matter and how I addressed it was a bit immature and un-academic. My second essay is a bit more elaborate and serious, touching on the sensitive subject of proprietary software why things like Microsoft Word should be free for everyone. And my third essay… well, there is no third essay. And those two essays I have to write? They’re only worth 25% of my mark. The rest of my mark goes towards participation and multiple choice question tests and quizzes. I’m a fan of neither. I’m the strong silent type of person and I tend to be selfish and keep to myself, so participating in class is not really something I’m a fan of. And multiple choice questions are something that prevented me from getting “A” grades in past classes, like Shakespeare, because I would fail them. All of the time. I just can’t read a book and memorize it. Hell, I can’t even remember what I wrote in the first two paragraphs of this personal paper. It just doesn’t work for me. Granted, the subject matter in Ethics is overall interesting, but I don’t think it’s doing any wonders for me. If anything, it’s making me appreciate my English degree even more. And that’s not going to bode very well.

In short, I don’t think school is for me anymore. I just want to be free, like in those hippy songs of old. I want to be free to do whatever I want, when I want, during my free time. I don’t want to be bound by due dates and shitty assignments. I just want to get a job, make some money, and do something I love on the side. I want to write. And I want to play and love video games, and MAYBE—and that’s a big MAYBE—make video games someday. But not by programming them. I want to write them, I want to craft game design documents that become bibles to a team of a hundred people. I want to tell stories and dissect them. And I want to see and discuss how others do the same. Most of all, I want to be a leader that dips his hand into every aspect of video game making, not just the programming bit; sound, art, level design, marketing, testing, writing… Taking a Computer Science degree, then, is not the right path for me, because I don’t like having things just sitting right in front of me anymore, especially things like my future. I want that to be open ended.

Now it’s just a matter of me thinking about what I want to do for the next two years…