A Bit of Pride, For Once.

I've never been much of an over-achiever. I've discovered exactly the amount of work I need to do to get A's, and I've somewhat stuck there. Unfortunately, it works for me, so I never had much of an incentive to change that part of myself. However, it rarely resulted it work I was really proud of; everything I made was good enough, sometimes even pretty good! But I never felt any kind of pride in it.

In my freshman year of college, I took my first real computer science course (I had taken one in high school, but it was taught by a gym teacher with no experience, so it's a stretch to say I engaged). I'm not sure why, but I immediately fell in love with the subject. I found myself completing assignments as far as a month in advance, doing the research on my own because I actively enjoyed the work. This was all so incredibly out of character for me, I am far from motivated.

Because of this love, I was excited for the final project and the opportunity to, in all honesty, flex my skills. Now, was I particularly amazing at coding as a whole? No, but I was good at the specific things we were doing, which was thrilling. For my final project, all I had to do was create a program that used the different skills we learned in class. Some students made complex polls, questionnaires, or tic-tac-toe-esque games. I, for the first time in my memorable life, was determined to create something great, and for my skill level, I truly feel I did.

The program I created is an interactive text-based adventure game. The image included below is a bit of the exposition, but it gives an idea of the concept. This game is 15-20 minutes long, includes a commerce mechanic, a combat system, and a few puzzles. I spent a solid 20 hours making it work, and while that's not particularly long for something like this, it is by far more time than I've willingly spent on a project I chose to do. It is very rudimentary, but for my skill level I am very proud.

In the game, the player is sent to both an armory and a potion shop, then sent off their way to defeat an orc and save the village. They must defeat said orc and an elf nearby to gain all information needed to open the gates and free the villagers.

So, all in all, it's just a wonderful feeling to be proud of something. I found what I love to do, and what I'm generally good at, and I plan to stick to it.