After Maria Sofia and her touching story from Palestine, full of hope and enthusiasm, here is my second guest in this series dedicated to my former students and their successful careers in the world of work, university or research.
Emanuele has always been the nerdish type with his love for fantasy books - "prof., what about reading some good Tolkien pages in our classes"? - rock music and computers. Achievement after achievement, he now lives in Milan, has an important job, works in a field he loves but still dreams to achieve more. He wrote this piece for my present pupils - see it on Learn Online - in order to share his love for Computer Science and pass a few good tips to them..
Hello, I’m Emanuele and Mrs Spila was my English teacher during my high school years, so I’m
really proud to write a post for her blog.
Let’s see what happens when I try to sum up my whole life in a short post... Well, let’s start from the beginning. My high school career wasn’t that brilliant, mostly because I
spent those years playing the guitar, listening to music and reading fantasy books. I was quite weir and it was really hard for me to study something I couldn't find cool, exciting or useful. So, I have
to admit, high school was really boring for me.
After leaving school I had no idea of what I was going to do in my life so I enrolled to University, Computer Science Department of La Sapienza, in Rome.
The first year was a
nightmare! I couldn’t pass any Maths exam because they were so hard for me and I had no skills for
programming. Till then I hadn’t written a single line of code in my entire life. I started
feeling really frustrated and, at the end of the first year, I started thinking that computer science
wasn’t the right choice. However, I decided to resist just another year before quitting definitely.
Guys, guess
what? My second year was amazing!
I started studying hard, I totally changed my attitude and,
finally, I discovered the creative and fun aspect of this world.
I clearly remember those years, they were tough but, at the same
time, challenging. I studied a bunch of new things every day and all classes where
based on cutting edge technologies: algorithms, artificial intelligence, micro processors, data bases
and other nerdy stuff I’d always loved!