In college I got to the "weed out" course for sophomores and juniors. Operating systems. Most people floundered and I did exceedingly well in it. I became obses

In college I got to the "weed out" course for sophomores and juniors. Operating systems. Most people floundered and I did exceedingly well in it. I became obsessed with different kinds of operating systems and how they were built. In particular, multi-core/parallel (which was a big thing back then) and real time operating systems. My professor invited me to the graduate parallel programming class as an undergrad and I had a GREAT time. Then I got into compilers, the weed out course for seniors, and enjoyed it as well. All of the different optimizations, algorithms, clever things that can be deployed to make things fast and efficient. I ended up taking a graduate numerical analysis course as well which was math with a "computer science" flavor to it. It meshed very well with my brain and I loved learning about all the different speed up procedures and ways we can make computers do math by cleverly manipulating functions. I was always interested in computer science adjacent things because growing up I was always using second hand computers, and so I had to come up with ways to make things fast on slow hardware. Once I got into school it solidified my love for the field itself. My only regret is I wasn't able to finish graduate school because I was paying out of pocket and working a 40 hour a week job.