Hello dear reader!

With midterms week just around the corner and projects piling up, I think everyone is feeling pretty frenzied. And with that, I've been thinking a lot about what exactly it is that computer scientists do, and I think I may have figured it out.

We fail.

It's true! I don't know if anyone has ever written even a marginally complicated program without the compiler finding something wrong with it. CS is all about finding your errors, fixing them, and then getting twenty new errors for your trouble.

In all seriousness, I've come to appreciate CS so much more now that I've realized this. In this major, we learn almost exclusively through our mistakes and it's refreshing that here, failing is the norm. Because failure means progress, and without it, you can't be successful.

Computer science takes so much patience and an unbelievable amount of creativity. It's not formulaic and there are no simple guides you can memorize to ensure you get that A. And that's probably the best, and most rewarding, thing about being a CS major: there is no such thing as a boring assignment and every thing you code, you can call entirely your own. This is an incredibly vigorous major, so if you fail, it's okay! All you have to do is next time, fail better.