When I was in first grade waiting for my turn on the swings, two second graders took the opportunity to tell me how much smarter they were than me. They knew what happened in the Revolutionary War. Did I? Of course not, because first graders are stupid, they told me.

Revolutionary War

I was pretty freaked out to go to second grade at that point. From the way they described it, it was going to be pretty much impossible and I’d probably just have to repeat it for the next ten years or so.

But I got to second grade and did just fine. Sure, I could, never, figure out where, commas, were supposed to go in, sentences but I wasn’t, stupid. I just hadn’t learned about Pilgrims or Native Americans yet, so I wasn’t ready for the Boston Tea Party.

Anyways, now I’m in CS 429 (Computer Organization and Architecture) and it’s definitely not easy. But like everyone in our class seems to think, this is obviously nothing compared to operating systems, which we’ll have to take next semester.

But I’d like to suggest an alternate message: it’s going to be okay. When you get there, you’ll be ready, and when you need to know something, they’ll give you the resources you need to learn it.

Furthermore, we need to not belittle the efforts of people below us who haven’t gotten to where we are yet. I know that CS 312 is not as hard as 314 which is not as hard as 429. But the same structure has existed going from each grade to the next, every single year we’ve been students. Some people did have trouble in first grade, and some people had trouble later on. Still, we all made it to middle school. But just because something is easy for you doesn’t mean that people who don’t understand it aren’t smart. They just have a different background and are at a different place in their lives.

So I’m going to do my best to get on the swings and try to worry about it as little as possible.


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