Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are?
As a child, I discovered friendship and adventure in a small plastic box labelled “Nintendo Gamecube”. I wondered how these mystical plastic boxes were programmed to contain such magnificent universes. In an attempt to code my own not-so-plastic boxes, I learned Java in 8th grade, HTML/CSS in 10th grade, and finally Swift in 11th. Thus began my journey, not to attack something, as one must in many video games, but to create. With programming languages as my faithful weapons, I stepped boldly into the world of computer science. I’ve accomplished a lot on my quest, and my experiences have shaped my dream to make video games that can help people think logically and connect with others.
Every good video game has a tutorial section where mistakes are ignored and simple actions are rewarded, and if my programming life was a video game, my 8th grade experience with Java would be the introductory level. Like any “level 1” protagonist, I stumbled over simple errors such as missing semicolons and instances of “ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.” However, I never gave up. I had soon coded three of my very own games: SolitaireStuck, Space Invaders Fandom Style, and Return of the CP9 and posted about them on my website, tetradserket.weebly.com. I found I had the power to create things on my own and resolved to continue on my journey.
My sophomore year internship at a startup company called Equate Health was the video game equivalent of a side quest: a chance for players to upgrade their skills and gain experience points before returning to the main storyline. I battled my way through lines of JavaScript and HTML, faced a particularly large monster called a “due date,” and learned to deftly navigate the maze of Google searches to find help. As I wrote software that would facilitate patient-doctor communication, I realized that I wanted to help make a change in the world.
Make School Summer Academy 2015 was a completely different experience: a multiplayer challenge in video game terms. I joined students from Japan, China, Russia, Egypt, and many other countries as we worked together to make our own iPhone applications. Whether it was by sharing tips on coding in Swift or by simply relaxing over a game of Super Smash Brothers, I became friends with people who were very different from me, and yet, in our love of computer science, the same. I created two iPhone apps: QuizPlay (study Quizlet flashcards by playing games) and Appliance Smash (vent your frustration on unruly appliances). I found another purpose for the video games I would create: they could help people connect with others, just as I had done at Make School.
My quest is still far from over: in fact, there is so much to learn that this video game will probably never end. I’m definitely proud of what I’ve accomplished so far. The experiences of learning Java from the Internet, HTML and CSS at Equate Health, and Swift at Make School have all played a huge role in shaping who I am. In the future there will still be children who marvel at the worlds in their own plastic boxes, maybe this time labelled “Nintendo NX” or “Xbox One,” and maybe this time, those worlds will have been created by me.