My life-changing Pursuit Taylor Haley Starr

I sat across the room, watching my father in awe as he typed out a document with mind-blowing speed. I had no idea precisely what I was watching him do, of course, since I was only six years old, but still -- Wow. How can someone move his fingers so fast? I was never even allowed to touch the computer… something about how my “sticky fingers” weren’t good for the keys, or about how I might accidentally “destroy a document,” or some silly thing like that. Regardless, the highlight of my day was sitting on the living room couch, across from the desk where the almighty computer sat, and watching my father type and type. During the weeks leading up to my seventh birthday, my mother asked me what I might want; all I would do in response was point at the keyboard. So when that anticipated day came, after asking for a device like my father's for so long, I sat down to open my present. It wasn’t heavy enough to be a computer, but wasn’t light enough to be something dreaded… like socks. It was a keyboard. My life was forever changed.

After a whimsical childhood of sitting for three hours at a time and typing into nothingness, when I turned fourteen I started taking a University Computer Science Course at the Institute of Mathematics and...