I consider my decision to switch my university major to Computer Science as the point where my life suddenly got A LOT easier.
All through primary school in the UK, I was a stellar student. Indian genetics, and more so my parents’ role in my upbringing deserve full credit for it, but whatever the reason, the fact remained that I was about three years ahead of my class at the time.
Moving back to India in 2013 changed everything. Suddenly, I wasn’t an outlier. I was in a pool of ‘me’s, and to stand out, I had to work harder than ever.
I had grown to enjoy the feeling of being ahead, so I put in the work in this new environment to get back to the top of the class and to stay there. Despite the increased competition I managed to consistently rank among the class’s top handful of students from grades 6-9.
Then came another big shift.
In 10th grade my parents decided to move me to an international school that followed the IGCSE and IB curriculum.
My brother had moved there of his own will a couple of years ago, and I recently found out that he was the one who persuaded them to move me out of my old school just as he was graduating.
Not many students enter the IGCSE curriculum in 10th grade because the board exams cover both 9th and 10th-grade content, and the 9th-grade syllabus in IGCSE is vastly different from CBSE, the curriculum my old school followed.
This meant I had to catch up on an entire year’s worth of content while keeping up with my 10th-grade studies. Not only did I manage to do it, but I still ranked among the top five in my batch and was the highest-performing girl, leading to my election as Head Girl in 11th grade.
11th grade was a challenge for everyone because the IB curriculum marked yet another major jump in difficulty. When choosing subjects, I was strongly advised against my choice of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Math all at Higher Level. Most students took three Higher Levels (HLs) and three Standard Levels (SLs). A few took four HLs, but my particular combination was deemed one of the most challenging. I took it anyway.
As if that wasn’t enough, I was also intensely focused on learning the piano those couple of years. My goal was to complete Trinity Grade 8 in Traditional Piano before finishing 12th grade and apply to conservatories to pursue music full-time. At the time, I wasn’t anywhere near prepared for Grade 8, and I definitely didn’t have the time to do all the grades leading up to it. I took the exam straight after passing Grade 4 — a massive leap that required months of rigorous practice. A large part of my non-school hours were dedicated to the piano, and I had to work extra hard to stay on top of my IB coursework.
I did it all. I passed Grade 8 with merit and remained at the top of my batch, even with my “death wish” subject choices.
But, as you now know, I didn’t end up pursuing music. Grade 8 had felt like a huge achievement, but to think that it would be enough to get into music conservatories was a delusion. When I started looking into their application requirements, I realized I was still far below the benchmark.
It was also the year of COVID, and with all the uncertainty, opting for a reputable university I had gotten into through my academic backup plan felt like the safer choice. That’s how I ended up in a country I had barely heard of, in a city whose name I couldn’t pronounce, studying Astronomy — a subject I’d mistaken for Astrophysics.
University life wasn’t any easier.
My first year in BSc Astronomy was rigorous. The coursework was essentially just math and physics — the same as that of the Physics and Applied Physics programs, so students from all three majors studied together. Again, I worked hard, consistently ranking in the top 10%, which even earned me an invitation to join the university’s Honours College program.
My decision to switch to Computer Science wasn’t about running away from the difficulties of Astronomy (though realizing my oversight about what the subject entailed and that I didn’t enjoy studying planetary alignments helped); rather, it was a move towards something I had developed a newfound interest in.
To my surprise, Computer Science turned out to be far less intimidating than its name suggested. With no prior experience (I had dropped ICT in 10th grade), I expected a steep learning curve. Instead, it felt like a mix of basic math, an initial onboarding period to programming (which, compared to learning a spoken language, has far fewer words), and a lot of logic and problem-solving (basically common sense). Not a single course in my three-year Computer Science degree turned out to be as hard as Calculus 2 — a first-year course in the Astronomy program that I never finished because of the switch.
By overloading my second year with coursework, I freed up a large portion of my third year and used that time to work full-time.
You might think that putting so much on my plate made things harder, but it was more a question of time management than making my brain work harder. I was doing more work, but the work I was doing was fairly easy on my brain.
The point is: the career path I took after switching majors turned out to be a much easier climb than the ones my Astronomy/Physics-studying friends are still on.
That’s not objectively good or bad.
It’s good for me because I ended up doing something I like, and it’s good for them because they’re doing something they like. It just so happened that what I liked was a less steep climb.
I’m coming to the point, hold on.
Well, like many-a-students’, my life was mostly hustle over the past many years.
And for many students, that’s just how life is. Over the past year or two though, I’ve grown to envy those students.
Because over the past year or two, since graduating and (let’s say) leaving my last job, life has freed up significantly.
You could say that during the last year of uni, the sheer amount of work I had to do made up for the lower complexity of the actual work compared to what I’ve grown up studying. But after graduating, even the amount of work diminished. If life became easier after switching my bachelor program to Computer Science, now it was a piece of cake.
During this time, I’ve been working on various projects — learning digital marketing, building language apps and attempting to launch them as a startup. It’s an adequate portfolio to justify my “gap year” to friends, family, and future employers. But me? I know I could have done so much more in the same time frame.
The lack of structure — no work deadlines, check-in meetings, lectures, homework deadlines, or exams — combined with the absence of a social ecosystem (students, colleagues) let me slack off.
Someone more self-motivated would have done better.
That’s one reason I took the job at Bending Spoons. More responsibilities force you to manage your time better. It’s Parkinson’s Law — if you take on more to do, you will make time for it all. My brother has always followed this ideology: he’s constantly doing something new and somehow manages it all.
Another reason I took the job was to challenge my brain. I had fallen into the habit of working within my existing skillset rather than learning new things. This job would push me further into software engineering and make me more capable in a field that I genuinely want to grow in.
Before starting the job, though, I had this trip. And a little productivity sparkle in it was the JLPT.
I don’t need a Japanese language proficiency certificate for school or work, but I signed up (on the last possible date, might I add) just for the extra motivation to study. My lack of productivity over the past eighteen months weighed on me, so I wanted to make the most of this trip — enjoy it, yes, but also make it productive.
Learning languages has always been a long-term goal. I spent a fair amount of time in these recent months building two language apps — Fluenci and Tunetutor — but even they were simply a means to an end. Yes, I had hoped to make money out of them, but more than that, their purpose was to make the language learning process more efficient — for other users, but firstly for myself.
It’s a different story that I haven’t developed them to a point where they’d be helpful enough to actually benefit from using. But the point is, I like the idea of learning languages at least, and coming to Japan was the prime opportunity to commit to learning Japanese.
Now, with just days to go before the exam, I’ve been in full study mode. And I’m having the time of my life.
I’m on the penultimate chapter of the Genki book series now, so I feel qualified to comment holistically on my learning journey so far. This obviously isn’t the last update — I’ll have more to say around the time of the exam and also at the end of the trip, by which time I hope to be a lot better at it than I am now.
It’s already been a rollercoaster though, and I’ve had my extreme highs and lows.
Stage 1 was procrastination, and blind overconfidence. That translated to a sheer lack of studying, while Mama and his family were here. Their presence made it justifiable.
Stage 2 was beginning to study. I love myself some structure so after trying out a few different resources and coming up with my own study plan that combined them all while I was still in London, it was a relief when Onkar recommended a series of two textbooks called Genki, that I could stick to as my only study resource. I picked up from what little I’d started studying before the trip, blocking a few hours each day for it.
The realization that we were both going to fail kicking in marked the beginning of Stage 3: only (panic-ridden) studying.
And it’s debatable what kind of a decision this stage would prove to be in the long term — productive? Regrettable? Either way, it made me feel something I honestly have been lacking for a while: challenged.
I haven’t been in formal education for over a year, and aside from a brief period of job interview preparation, I haven’t really engaged in serious learning for months. My brain’s had it easy — and that wasn’t a good thing.
I could feel it becoming lazy. But as I’ve come to remember, learning a new language forces your brain to work a lot.
I left off tonight at the second to last chapter of Genki 2: the second and final book in the Genki series.
Genki 1 was tougher, because it taught the basic structures and rules of the language from scratch. Everything I read would be novel. And I’d have to give it my full attention to feed it into my brain.
As I made progress, it felt easier because some things I read, inevitably, I’d already learned. As I got more and more practice at these, they started coming to me easier.
It’s difficult, for example, to remember any given chapter’s new vocabulary during the practice exercises of the chapter itself, but when those words are revisited in subsequent chapters over and over, they slowly get ingrained into your brain. Some later chapters go into in-depth explanations of the grammar behind common phrases that have been taught as-is in earlier chapters, and you get those ‘aha’ moments when you understand how they actually originated.
If I’m fully concentrated, I can finish a single chapter in as little as two hours.
Of course, if I sit down to memorise each and every thing I’ve learned before moving on it would take me an awful lot longer, but from experience I’ve noticed that the breadth of what I learn seems to serve me better than the depth. I’ve been able to make out the meaning of a lot more in real life since learning new concepts from later chapters in Genki, and even though I might not be able to recall what a certain word means, having the grammatical base to know its place in a sentence makes me able to infer it better
It also helps to be on this learning journey as a speedrun, since I’m not spending half a week between consecutive lessons so previously learned information is still fresh in my mind.
I mentioned Ananya in an earlier post — a self-taught Japanese-language influencer that I follow on Instagram. I’m once again reminded of her advice about treating your brain like a sponge and wildly overestimate its capacity. That idea became real the moment I signed up for the exam, and even if I don’t remember everything, I’m retaining far more than I expected.
And amidst all this, I finally feel my brain working — being challenged — in a way that it hasn’t been in so long. In a way that it’s missed.
Language learning as an adult is vastly different from school-taught languages. English and Hindi are practically both my mother tongues, and I’ve learned French to a decent level at school. Classes, two or three times a week. Homework I didn’t particularly enjoy. I studied, sure, but the motivation was different — my main goal was to score well, more than it was to truly become fluent, and my learning process for French reflected that.
This time, it’s different.
Barring the times that I’m in panic over doomsday (the exam), exhilarating is the best word to describe this new language learning journey.