How I learn new things

Script for "Engineering Writing and Presentation" Class presentation

[How I learn something : getting used to it]

 Hello fellow students, my name is HaningYa , and I am a junior at Pusan National University majoring Computer Science and currently working as mobile developer at start-up company.

 

 When I was child, I didn’t expected to study computer science or engineering. So why did I choose my major to CS? There is no fancy reason. Because I thought Computer Science doesn’t learn any math stuff. I was really bad at mathematics so I wanted to avoid as much as possible. However after I took some courses, I realized math was kind of important. From linear algebra to discrete mathematics, Despite of hard work, I failed every math lecture. I had no idea how to study those things. I even thought about changing my major.

 

 Hopefully I found something that is both fun and related to my major, it was app development. As I started to learn how to make an Android app, it was hard. I didn’t know anything about how to code like Object Oriented, or Java language, Android activity life-cycle etc. Since I hated to learn from book, I just searched “How to make android app”. As I search that, I realized I needed “Android Studio” to make app. So I searched how to install android studio and by searching and searching I finally made my first “Hello World” android application. Since then every time I wanted to build that I don’t know, I searched for examples and implement and understand the sequence, or structure of code. After few month later, I was able to make android app by level of making money by those apps.

 

 After that experience, I learned not only how to make apps, but also how to approach new fields for example, new frameworks, technology or library. The secrete that I could learn from scratch to making money level, is I tried hard to get used to it. People feel uncomfortable or easily get scared of unfamiliar things. So people stop hanging out with those scary things and get back to comfort zone. You have to overcome those things. Despite you don’t know anything, literally everything, you have to face them and have to get used to it. I know I’m just a little tiny junior student who can’t do anything without googles search results, but I wanted to tell you guys, just get used to it because even inventor of modern computer architecture John von Neumann said “Young man, in mathematics you don’t understand things. You get used to them”.

 

Thank you for listening.