<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">On Jul 23, 2019, at 3:45 PM, Phil Shapiro via Ipg-smz <<a href="mailto:ipg-smz@netpress.org" class="">ipg-smz@netpress.org</a>> wrote:<br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 16px;" class=""> Just curious, what class or major did you transfer out of?</span><br class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div></blockquote></div><div><br class=""></div><div>When I was accepted at Brandeis, I was asked to provide a major, so that I could be assigned the right advisor. </div><div><br class=""></div><div>I didn’t really know what I wanted, so I contemplated my two best subjects in high school: programming and English. I told my mother, “I don’t know whether to write down ‘computer science’ or ‘English.’”</div><div><br class=""></div><div>“Well,” mom said, “You could always write books about computers!”</div><div><br class=""></div><div>I responded with the plaintive whine of a 17-year-old, “Mothhhhhhhher!”</div><div><br class=""></div><div>But neither of those majors lasted a semester. I discovered that an English major was expected to read boring 18th century fiction and to re-do all the grammar courses I’d already aced. And — given that I already thought I knew how to program — I cut classes for programming so much that I was utterly lost. I got a C on the final (and didn’t even deserve that). I’d never gotten a C before and I freaked out. I didn’t come back to programming for five years.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>I switched to Linguistics, with a minor in Women’s Studies. The latter was a minor only because it wasn’t available as a major. Had I stayed for my senior year, my thesis was going to be on the anthropology of women and language.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>…So now I write about computers.</div></body></html>