Having computer science as a major and computer programming as a career is really just a way for me to get away with making money while having fun. I really like computers and computer programming. Tonight I was getting mad at a program I was working on "for not working" (in actuality it was working perfectly, my instructions were imperfect) and yet I was still really having fun. It was not the same kind of fun as you have at an amusement park, but it was still a lot of fun. One of my goals in life is to make myself into a person who seeks out the greater joys available in life instead of desperately chasing fleeting pleasures. The joys of going to classes and seeing friends and eating cereal in the morning, all of those things have a greater appeal to me than doing "fun things." A perfect example of this principle is the other weekend when I went on a rafting trip. I had as much "fun" going to and from the river as I actually had rafting. All I did was sit on a bus and talk to people, but that still gave me a kind of joy.

Of course I have considered the possibility that all this supposed joy is really just a fortunate chemical happenstance that I am currently enjoying due to nice sunshiny days and a healthy dose of self-deception. If that is the case then in order for me to follow God's commandment not to lie (not even to myself) I have to know what is really going on inside of me. As a little kid I was always afraid of infinity and space and forever. In second grade more than once I cried myself to sleep thinking about such subjects. So it seems very odd that in Calculus the issue of limits at infinity and infinite series are looked at only as abstract arithmetic problems to be solved. I am primarily interested in science and history from a literary point of view. They are both epic stories, like Arthurian legend or Tolkien. Which makes it very odd that my heart should be so set on becoming a computer programmer someday. There is no story to tell in getting a program to work. All there is laborious coding. My attraction to programming must stem from the absolute control humans have over computers; whereas I have little or no control on the world around me.

I am rereading C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. It certainly contains a number of personal moral challenges for me. I wonder if this time I shall actually be able to live up to any of them. That is another area of life in which my control is less than I desire it to be. So here Mr. or Ms. National Merit Scholarship reader is my life in a nutshell. I like computers; I want to be a better person; I wish I had more control of my spiritual life and the world around me. I also make good grades and win awards if you care about that sort of thing.