One of the most formative classes I took was in middle school- it was a general "engineering" class- we built balsa wood and wax paper airplanes, balsa-wood bri

One of the most formative classes I took was in middle school- it was a general "engineering" class- we built balsa wood and wax paper airplanes, balsa-wood bridges, learned VB and made tic-tac-toe and backgammon, our teacher got every student copies of Neverwinter Nights and we used NWScript to make mods and learn simple stuff like for-loops. And he had a lab with Stronghold and Microsoft Flight Sim(with controllers) where we could hang out after school and play games together. I was coming from a background where I wasn't eating every day, the only sport I could afford to do was track- and that was only because the track coach was gracious enough to take me to a running store and buy me shoes, I was spending my nights cleaning office buildings, spending my early mornings getting to school early to shower and cram in my homework for the day before class. I was at a private school, so there was no reduced or free lunch program, and I had a very hard time staying awake in class, except for his class. Partially due to un-diagnosed ADHD and a really terrible home situation. That class gave me an attainable goal to work towards, and now I'm a programmer today. I had previously relegated my ambitions to simply surviving.