I Give Up!

Life can be really hard sometimes. I am 24 today. I have decided to give up.
Yes. I have decided to give up on my comfort zone. A zone that I have unknowingly created in recent time towards learning Mathematics and Computer Science.

I have never seen myself as a Computer Science and Mathematics major who does Music. In fact, I have always considered myself as a Music major who does Computer Science and Mathematics. I have my own selfish reasons for this. Music allows me to be creative. So does Writing. Philosophy, Computer Science and Mathematics make me smart on a daily basis, which in turn allows me to be creative. I would never want to completely switch to one major and leave the other. This is how I would want to play because there is no other way to play. I am purely selfish.

What Computer Science, Philosophy and Mathematics teach you is Critical thinking and the fundamental meaning of Abstraction. Critical thinking instills in you the ability and habit to look at the smallest building blocks of a structure and move up from there. This is how Elon Musk approaches every single problem at Tesla and SpaceX. He believes reading Philosophy and Physics gives you enough abilities to change the world. Whether you end up doing it or not is a whole another thing and we can discuss it later.

If you want to dig deep into the Philosophy behind reading Philosophy, there is a writing piece I did recently: Why You Should Be Reading Philosophy

When it comes to learning, I believe that things have gone much to the business aspect and how much money one is able to make. Learning has been kept in a separate lane, which very few people feel important to even step at. That’s what I have been doing. In recent past, I have become really comfortable with what I already know in Computer Science and Mathematics. And it has started to bug me. Like really.

This entire feeling which is making me write this post has nothing to do with a particular higher salary that I am planning for or maybe a Doctorate admission that I am aiming for or to impress any Professor to fetch a LOR. Nope. Not at all. I try not to make such shallow goals. Fun part being, I already have a job offer from one of the world’s top notch product based technology company with a compensation of over Rs. 2 million. I am still feeling messy about the learning attitude. So, this is not what this post is aiming at. If you presumed so and feeling disheartened, I would be fine if you close this tab.

Fuck fat cheques or fancy places. In my eyes, even credentials do not speak much. I have seen people lying to themselves to an extent of claiming to be doing research in Deep Learning (Oh NO!) while struggling to write a basic recursive code.

What I am talking about here is something bigger than a salary. Something bigger than admission at Stanford. Something bigger than getting an offer from Google or maybe Uber (these days).

Learning is a discipline that you should have emotions for. There is no strict rule that could be imposed on someone to learn something. There has to be craving from the inside. I haven’t been feeling this from past 1 year. But now it’s bugging me. The fvery act that I am not getting better at critical thinking on a daily basis is bugging me.

Computer Science isn’t so much about just the syntax. It involves Algorithms, Mathematics, Computability, reducing real world problems to computational problems. If you want to start the next revolution, it’s not going to be based on having written another 10,000 lines of code. It’s going to be based on some insights you get from the Mathematics behind those concepts.

I firmly believe that those who cannot have fun while getting an education probably do not know anything about either of them. By education, I do not strictly imply University Education. I am talking about something more abstract. Education for Life.

So, I plan to do CORE Mathematics and Computer Science everyday for 2 hours from now.

Did you figure out a head fake?

This article isn’t for you.

This is for me.

To remind me how I should approach learning.

Go beers. Keep learning.

For there is no other way to play.