The Infamous smallsh… November 24th, 2023
From Dread and Tears to Growth and Triumph
It was Fall of 2020 when I began my first term in the Post-Bacc Computer Science program at Oregon State University. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. I knew coming into the program that it was not going to be an easy endeavor. With the reputation computer science has, being conceptually difficult to grasp and requiring specific skills and abilities, I wasn’t sure if I was going to sink or swim.
Being new to programming, I knew that these first few courses were going to be crucial and would set the tone for the rest of the program. With that mindset, I gave everything I had to learn the material and build the foundation I needed to succeed in this program. After successfully completing my first term and feeling that I truly grasped the concepts taught, my confidence began to grow. The more classes I completed, the more I started to think that I might actually be able to do this. That was until I took Operating Systems I.
Operating Systems is notorious for being one of the most difficult courses in the program and one project in particular ‘smallsh’ had the reputation of breaking even the most confident of students. One of things that makes this course so difficult is that it is taught in C language, and for most students, this was their first time using it.
I had heard horror stories about this project, so I knew that if I was going to conquer it, I would need to start early and utilize every tool available. Though even with this, the struggle started immediately. It seemed like as soon as I figured out one problem, another would arise. This led to hours and hours of reading, testing, designing, redesigning, retesting and oftentimes winding up with no progress made.
All that confidence I had gained leading up to the course was suddenly shattered. Feeling frustrated and defeated, I started to question whether I could do it. Even though these feelings were agonizing, ultimately it would prove to teach me one of the best lessons I’ve learned. Just keep going. With each problem I solved in this assignment, my confidence slowly began to come back, which gave me the drive to solve the next problem, then the next. After days of grinding and figuring out solutions, I ran the test script provided to check if our programs had met the assignment criteria. Seeing that test script come back with 150/150 points and knowing that I had completed something that had built up in my head as being impossible, was a feeling of accomplishment I had felt only a handful of times in my life.
To this day, this moment sticks out as the biggest success throughout this program and continues to help me achieve newer and bigger goals in my life.
