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Colby Barker Ron Christiansen English 2010 October 16, 2013 The Chosen Path The first thing I noticed when he came through the door is that he was holding something like a grey brick in his hand. Why would anyone be carrying around a brick? Whats that you got in your hand? It looks like some kind of brick, I asked. This isnt a brick. Its a Gameboy, He instantly replied. You dont know what a Gameboy is!? A Game boy? Well I can obviously tell you dont know what it is, so let me show you what it does. We both walked into the guest room of my Grandpas house and sat down on the bed. This game is Pokmon you capture little monster animals in these things called pokballs and you use them to battle other people that have captured Pokmon also, My Cousin explained. I was instantly hooked on this device known as the Gameboy, which would eventually lead me to figure out that you could also play video games on the computer. Little did I know that a Gameboy would lead me to what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, to be involved with technology mostly with computers. Even the small things in life can lead you to new heights.

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Around the year 2001 I finally had my own personal computer that I could use whenever I wanted. One of my best friends already had a family computer that he got to use all the time and introduced me to the computer game known as StarCraft made by Blizzard Entertainment. A year later in, 2003, the game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos game came out which was also made by Blizzard. This opened my eyes to the wonderment of the computer, how it could read a cd disc and allow you to play games, and hook up to the thing known as the Internet. By this time I had a clue on what I wanted to do for the rest of my life: I wanted to make games like these for other people, so they could experience the same shock and awe I did when I played these games for the very first time. I figured out the career for making games was known as programmer. Just by playing something as simple as a computer game, it lead me to something as big as my career path. I think most career are established by something small that has occurred in ones life. For example, having a pet that got sick when you were young and you managed to help the animal get better, which lead you to becoming a veterinarian when you grew up. In the ninth grade I took a summer course of basic programming, and I did not like it. This wasnt how I imagined games were made. I was in some fantasy realm where I thought it was a like jig saw puzzle, you put the pieces together and Kablamo! You made yourself a video game; and boy was I wrong. I still had an interest in computers and video games; I just didnt know any other careers that were associated with computers. Eventually I figured out what other careers allowed you to use computer, like a web designer, computer technician, and a network technician. Web designing always looked interesting to me, but I noticed that a lot of websites required creativity and user friendly interfaces. I didnt think I was creative enough to make a website that thousands of people would use every day.

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In 2012 I was already in my senior year of high school and I was taking a Networking/Computer Repair class that was offered off campus. I really liked learning about the parts of the computer and how to replace parts when things went bad. While the networking part of the class was pretty neutral for me, it was definitely an option for the future. There were two other computer classes you could also take, that was the web design class which didnt really interest me and the programming class. Once again programming sucked me back in. One day I saw a student from the programming class and asked, Did you have any troubles trying to learn how to program from day one? It was confusing and hard at first, but since I had friends that were also taking the same class, we grouped up and help each other out to make it much simpler, he replied. Maybe that was the problem; I tried to learn how to program by myself without the help of others. I thanked the programming student and continued the rest of my day, thinking that I should have just taken the programming course from the start instead of networking. When I graduated high school and planned to attend Salt Lake Community College, I planned on taking programing in the Computer Science major, since I was older and thought about what that student told me the year before. The first fall semester I took two major courses and two general courses. Once again when I took programming even with other peers that related to me, I still did not like it one bit. By the time fall semester ended I finally figured out that programming was not for me. My 1030 Computer Science teacher Mr. Pope told my class that programming is the dark side of computer science. Which I humbly agreed to after that fall semester. The next semester I decided to go back to networking. The course that SLCC offers made it so much easier than the class I took in my senior year of high school. I had no problems

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at all during the spring semester and was completely satisfied that I had finally found the career I wanted to study for my college and career, and probably for most of my working life. It is amazing how the Gameboy entered my life and let me take the steps needed, for me to find the computer and what career fields it had to offer. If that device and Pokmon was never invented I could be writing a paper on something completely different, which allowed me to choose the career I want for the rest of my life. Even great things can come from something as small as a Gameboy