El Diablo

Have you ever been chased by death? The grim reaper himself? El Diablo? I have. In my 19 years of procrastination, I’ve never felt my Spidey-senses tingle more than when my computer science professor was around the corridor in secondary-school. “The 3500-word essay is due in 2 weeks, what in the world is your topic?” Honestly, at that point, I could’ve written a 3500-word essay on how to make excuses and that’d probably get me an A, too. Yes, I got an A in the end, don’t worry; with that being said, towards the end, the grade itself didn’t matter to me all that much and in all seriousness, my experience with writing a simple 3500-word essay ended up being one of the most important literacy events in my life. It was a literacy narrative that forced me to open up to reading, writing, and research about computer science. It shaped the vision of my dream career, encouraged me to learn through self-study, and most importantly, allowed me to write this story about me, my best friend and of course, my computer science professor, El Diablo.

Intimidation. Those were my feelings described in a single word. Writing a 3500-word piece of text for an entirely original research paper was no small task for a mere secondary-school student. For me, the cherry on top was the fact that writing the introduction itself was the most challenging part because it was meant to be the crucial first step that laid the groundwork and foundation for the rest of the essay. The pressure and anxiety of writing an introduction made me give up before even starting. The process of writing an introduction became an endless cycle of checking my smartphone approximately 297 billion times every 3 seconds, only to realize that my friends were infinitely more productive than I was. The feelings of pressure and incompetence overwhelmed my desire for knowledge. This was a wall I couldn’t get past by myself.

In a sense, my situation was an irony that I put myself into. I was unwilling to break out of my comfort zone to read and research on topics that seemed “too tedious” to dive into at first glance.  This is where my best friend stepped in. Let’s call him John. John was clever in his approach. He loved making me feel stupid. Frankly, I believe that’s a major part of the reason why he helped me. A week before the deadline, John, with his seemingly pretentious choice of words, asked me, “Hey Vinayak, why don’t you do the research essay on the performance metrics of different supervised learning algorithms under a binary classification scenario?” Irritated, I replied with “No, please don’t make fun of me,” with a not-so-polite expression on my face. At this point, John sent me an email containing an interview and said, “Read this when you reach home and I’ll see your essay in about…3 days. Good luck.”

In my disbelief about what John said, I read the interview when I reached home. The interview talked about a company, called “Cambridge Analytica,” that tipped the balances of the presidential elections of one of the most powerful countries in the world using techniques that seemed nothing less than supernatural at the time. Through the means of something as simple as advertisements, they achieved an “11.3 percent increase in favorability for Trump” and an “8.3 percent increase in intent to vote for Trump.” (Butcher, “Cambridge Analytica CEO”) How could that even happen? I never took advertisements for anything more than minor inconveniences. How could they be such an overpowered tool? In all honesty, it'd be an understatement to say that this piqued my interest. I was fascinated. I was excited to know more. Cambridge Analytica’s achievement represented the power that computers possessed. The ability to change the worldviews and mindsets of living and breathing individuals so drastically, through methods so subtle, fascinated me. I spent the rest of my night reading on and on about the company and its techniques. Hours flew by and, without realizing, I effortlessly did what I struggled to do before: Reading and researching. 

This opportunity was enough for me to realize that there was nothing more humbling than being unable to answer questions that I asked myself. I could have all the superpowers that I desired, and all I had to do was look beyond the initial “tediousness” that I felt when reading about a topic. My desire to know more started to surpass my anxiety of being incompetent. I began to gain confidence and became motivated to read more that was enough to research and learn on my own. It wasn’t before long that my new-found passion for reading and research translated into questions and further curiosity. Words translated into information. Information gave birth to concepts. Concepts created ideas and before long, ideas allowed me to ask questions. Questions like “How do the performance metrics of two different supervised learning algorithms vary under a binary classification scenario?” Out of the many questions that I formulated out of the many ideas that I gathered, I was now able to write my very own research question. This was it. There was no wall holding me back anymore. I skipped school and wrote continuously for 3 days. In the end, I produced a 5000-word mess of an essay with no organization or structure. This may seem good enough for a 3-day effort, but the best was yet to come.

After the 3-day sleepless journey, my trip back to school was filled with both relief and anxiety. While I was relieved that I was able to see a new perspective of literacy through reading and research, I was also nervous. I was already thinking about writing a 500-word apology email to El Diablo because it was clear that my new-found passion for the subject was vomited onto a 20-page document with no concept of revision; However, as Lamott said, “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts” (855). Surprisingly enough, Diablo’s support in this matter was unexpected. He was more than happy to help me refine my essay. I believe that this was because, for the first time, he saw me showing interest and effort in pursuing computer science outside of his lectures; my perspective of him changed. For the first time I thought that, maybe, the monster chasing me around the corridor was trying to help me all along. Diablo taught me how to refine my research paper by focusing on the strengths of paper and cutting down on the miscellaneous parts. In a matter of 2 days, my essay became a detailed 3500-word streamlined research paper that I was very proud of.

On the day that I went to submit the final draft of my paper, John looked at me. He gave me his smuggest expression and I expected no less. I immediately knew what he was trying to say. I had no complaints. He granted me an invaluable superpower in exchange for a laugh. A desire to read, write and do research in computer science. In my opinion, it was well worth it.

Works Cited

Butcher, Mike. “Cambridge Analytica CEO talks to TechCrunch about Trump, Hilary and the future.” TechCrunch, 06 Nov. 2017, https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/06/cambridge-analytica-ceo-talks-to-techcrunch-about-trump-hilary-and-the-future/ 

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts.” Writing About Writing: A College Reader, edited by Elizabeth Wardle, Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017, p. 855.