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Childhood Memories

My awareness with the field of Software started in my early childhood.

Engineering Symptoms

Some engineering symptoms started appearing on me when I was a kid… At first, I was staring at things for hours without talking… My father told me that he was always wondering “what’s going on in her mind!”…

Sometime later, I started disassembling things, starting from toys and ending with electrical appliances (radio cassettes, washing machines…) and using the spare parts to build something else. I sometimes just disassembled machines just to rebuild them after a great exploration phase. I was kind of danger, but my folks liked this.

I also used to sketch weird drawings for images in my mind till I was introduced to my first PC at the age of 11. When I saw it, new ideas started formulating in my head, I was reading a lot, and I wrote my first computer game at the age of 12, it was kind of strange for people around me but I liked the idea a lot and I decided to be an engineer, a computer’s engineer.

The Decision

Since then, I had one target in mind and I worked very hard to reach it for the next 6 years… I was heading the Engineering Faculty… and thank God, I reached my goal. During these 6 years I did a lot of things amongst which I remember writing a certain program which I learned years later that what I did was called a database! By the way seeing Windows 3.1 with its multi-tasking feature was kind of a dream or a miracle for me and it was one of the accelerators for me to continue in the field of engineering. By the way, many people tried to convince me to do something more useful and they advised me to go to the medicine school, but I didn’t want to.

Management Symptoms

Also, some management symptoms manifested themselves on me some years ago… I used to gather the neighbor’s kids and assign them tasks while talking to imaginary clients on the phone and committing to virtual deadlines… I was using my grandmother’s sewing machine as a desk!

The Prophecy

My family believed long ago that I will grow up to be a surgeon or a pianist as my fingers were long. I think that they forgot about the typist job, which with some modifications is equivalent to someone using the keyboard most of his day… a Developer than a Project Manager!

Hello “Real” World!

Real world is totally different that dreams and prophecies, when you leave your silo and get in touch with others, you start discovering the truth, and this is usually through shocks and disappointments which arose one after another:

  1. Students in the engineering school were categorized in 2 groups, a group sitting in the garden and a group sitting in the cafeteria… labs were empty!
  2. Some students joined this school because it is prestigious though they are not interested in engineering!
  3. In the world of theory, electrons traverse their orbits in pico and nano seconds… and I have to wait for hours for a bus to drive me home!

Lesson Learned

Windows is only at home not in school labs!

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Comments

Ayat Elshami said…
First, is it you who wrote this one? I mean am I missing some reference or something?

Second, if it's you and I didn't miss anything, is it truly about you, or the childhood stories are some brilliant fiction?

Third, why does the end feel truncated... I mean it's like we suddenly jumped to Hello "Real" World, which was totally fine for me, and then, without any sense of approaching the final, I say the line Posted by Mena Mostafa at 12:35 AM ;)
April 11, 2011 at 9:35 AM
Mena M. Eissa said…
First: It's me who wrote this one.

Second: Yes, it's truly about me, and it doesn't mean I'm a brilliant fiction :D

Third: The end feels truncated because this is what I can remember :$
April 11, 2011 at 12:58 PM
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