Undergraduate / I Love Coding - until the 8th grade my passion for computing started its journey [3]

Question: Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

The first time I was given a computer I didn't find anything appealing about it other than playing games, a few months after which I eventually got bored and wrapped it away in the attic. It wasn't until the 8th grade that my passion for computing started its journey when I was first introduced to programming. The first programming language my 8th grade teacher, and probably the only teacher, ever taught me was VISUALBASIC. Unlike most other kids in my class, who didn't care much about computers other than playing games and social media sites, I was fascinated not only by the idea of transforming thoughts into words that a machine could understand and execute but also the idea of minds creating minds.

Being intrigued by this the first thing I did when I came home was search through my attic to find the computer that I had once thrown away. The refusal of my teacher to teach me anything more than that was in the school syllabus didn't stop me from learning, to make matters even worse, the place where I lived didn't have an internet connection, the books in my school library were insufficient as they only illustrated what to write and when to write it, but not why, leaving me to tinker around with the very few sample codes provided within the language. I'd find myself spending 9 hours a day, at times even more than that, 7 days a week, 63 hours a week tinkering around with whatever I had at my disposal with nothing but the ticking sound of the wall clock to accompany me.

There'd be times when if things didn't go my way I'd just simply dash out of the house making up my mind never to look at, or even think about programming, but as soon as I get home I'd feel this undying invisible force of attraction that would draw me towards that very thing I swore never to take a glance at, which in turn would spark the fire of determination and make me keep trying until I get things right. Those weeks of hard work eventually paid off when I became the first ever person in the entire school to know more than what the syllabus had asked for; thus making me a beacon of computing knowledge to all my high school seniors to ask for assistance with their end of the year computing coursework.

But I didn't stop there. I kept on expanding my horizons, and within less than 2 years I had gone from just learning visualbasic to C, C#, C++, JAVA, web development and even low level machine code, which is what I basically learned to make my own artificially intelligent operating system like JARVIS, something that none of my teachers learned until the last year of college. Learning all of those languages wasn't an easy task for me. Due to not having an internet connection I'd often find myself walking 2 miles from home to the closest cyber café I could find only to browse the internet for 30 minutes or so, just barely enough time to download all the free e-books, articles and tutorials I could find.

I might not have accomplished anything astounding, or have done anything to put my mark on the world, or made history, but all I can say is my passion for computing has not only made me a determined self-motivated individual, but has also showed me that to every problem there's always a solution if you look deep enough.

P.S. can anyone suggest me a title for the essay that i've written. thanks!