How did you get into Computer Science?

People sometimes ask why I went into computer science.

There are many good answers I could give. I could say I had loved mathematics since childhood, or that I was fascinated by logic and algorithms, or that I always knew technology would shape the future.

Those answers sound neat. They also leave out the truth.

The truth is that I moved toward computer science for the same reason many adults change direction: the life I had no longer felt large enough.

I began my career as an elementary school teacher. I still respect that profession deeply. Teaching children is serious work. It demands patience, emotional control, responsibility, and daily effort that often goes unnoticed. A teacher helps shape people at the age when they are most open and most vulnerable. There is honor in that.

But honorable work does not automatically satisfy every part of a person.

My first posting was at Masan Elementary School, far from the city. It was a small school in a quiet place, and I lived in a shabby shed on the grounds. That sentence sounds exaggerated, but it is accurate. It was a real structure, and it was where I stayed.

There was no heating.

Winter in such a place changes your mood as much as your body. Cold enters your thoughts. It makes the world feel narrower. It makes tomorrow look smaller than it should.

I do not describe this because I believe I suffered greatly. Many people have lived through harder conditions without complaint. I only mean that those years gave me an early feeling of enclosure. I was young, energetic, and inwardly restless. My surroundings were calm and limited. The contrast became impossible to ignore.

5 years later, I moved to Dochang Elementary School, another small school. The children were kind, bright, and affectionate. The communities were decent. Nothing was fundamentally wrong with those places.

What was wrong was the fit between those places and my temperament.

Some people thrive in steady environments. They build rich lives through repetition, continuity, and deep local relationships. I admire that ability.

I was not built that way.

I wanted movement, scale. I wanted to feel that life was opening rather than narrowing.

Part of that desire was intellectual. I wanted to be around larger conversations, bigger institutions, and people with different experiences.

Part of it was simply human. I was still a relatively young man, and I wanted more energy around me—more people, more chance encounters, more unpredictability, more beauty, more city life.

I wanted to feel awake.

So I turned, as many people do, to the internet.

For me, the internet was not a distraction. It was an expansion of reality. Online, geography lost some of its power. A teacher in a small school could speak with people in media, business, politics, and culture. You were no longer confined to the reputation assigned by your local environment.

That mattered to me.

Through those networks, I became connected with the Korea Economic Daily as a teacher advisor. It was not a grand title, but it changed something in my mind. It showed me that a person could begin in an obscure place and still enter larger circles through initiative and communication.

That realization stayed with me.

Many people think advancement happens only through official channels: prestigious schools, major companies, visible promotions. Those routes matter, of course. But the digital world revealed another possibility. Someone on the margins could become visible. Someone unknown could become useful.

Once I saw that, I could no longer believe my surroundings were the final measure of my future.

Around the same time, I had a friend from university who made a very different life choice from mine. We had both graduated from a teacher’s college. We both could have followed the stable path into education.

He did not.

He became a software developer.

At first I thought of it as an unusual decision. Later I saw it differently. He had stepped into a field tied to growth, change, and the future while many of us stepped into fields tied to stability.

He never needed to persuade me directly. His example was enough.

Sometimes another person changes your life simply by showing that another life is possible.

Then the wider world began to shift. Artificial intelligence moved from specialist circles into everyday conversation. Software was no longer just transforming business operations. It was beginning to influence writing, translation, design, research, and judgment itself.

I felt that familiar sensation that history had started moving faster.

The old model of adulthood suddenly looked less secure than it once had. Study in youth, choose one profession, remain there for decades, collect seniority, retire with dignity—many people still hoped for that path, but it no longer felt universal.

Computer science began to look different to me. It was not just a technical major. It was becoming a language of the age.

Earlier generations benefited from literacy, then English, then industrial skills. Our era seemed to reward those who could understand systems, code, data, and networks.

I did not want to stand outside that world and depend entirely on people inside it.

So I entered the computer science program at Korea National Open University.

I came to respect that institution quickly. Many people underestimate places like KNOU. They imagine them as fallback options. What I found instead was a gathering place for adults who refused to stop developing.

There were office workers studying after long days. Parents reading textbooks after putting children to sleep. Public servants preparing for second careers. People who had chosen safety and wanted a challenge. People who had chosen dreams and wanted structure.

There was less vanity there than in many traditional academic spaces, and more determination.

People were not studying for appearances. They were studying because something in their lives required growth.

I understood that feeling immediately.

My own motives were mixed. I wanted practical skills. I wanted mobility. I wanted access to a changing future. I wanted to meet sharper and more ambitious people. I wanted to prove to myself that my life had not already settled into its permanent shape.

I also wanted freedom.

That word matters more to me now than passion. Passion comes and goes. It depends on mood, energy, praise, weather, and luck. Freedom is more durable. It should be able to answer the questions:

Does a path increase your options?
Does it make you more capable?
Does it place you closer to where change is happening?

Computer science seemed to do those things.

Of course, the reality was less romantic than the idea. There were dry subjects, frustrating bugs, abstract concepts, and the humbling experience of becoming a beginner again while younger students learned faster.

Some nights I wondered whether I was being brave or foolish.

Still, I continued.

The direction felt right even when the days felt difficult.

I also noticed that technical spaces contained people I found interesting: builders, outsiders, immigrants, introverts, career changers, obsessives, self-taught strivers, people more interested in competence than pedigree.

That kind of environment matters. Talent alone does not decide much. People grow or shrink depending on where they spend their time.

I had already learned what narrow environments could do. Even kind environments can become too small for certain temperaments.

That is an uncomfortable truth, because gratitude can become its own trap. When people around you are decent, you feel guilty wanting more. You ask yourself why you cannot simply be content.

I have asked myself that many times.

But I no longer think gratitude and ambition are enemies. A person can appreciate one chapter of life and still move toward another.

You can respect teaching and still seek technology.
You can love stability and still need growth.
You can be thankful and still be restless.

That restlessness led me here.

I do not romanticize the tech world. It can be shallow, greedy, and full of fashionable nonsense. But beneath all of that, something real remains: modern society increasingly depends on systems built by technically competent people.

Learning how those systems work changes the way you see the world.

It also changed the way I saw myself.

Studying computer science did not make me younger in age, but it made me younger in trajectory. It returned possibility to a life that had started to feel fixed.

That may be the deepest reason adult education moves me so much. There is dignity in people refusing to become finished too early.

So why did I get into computer science?

Not because I was destined for it.

I entered because my old life had become too narrow.

I entered because the internet showed me larger possibilities.

I entered because other people’s bold choices widened my imagination.

I entered because technology was reshaping the world.

I entered because I wanted skills, movement, new circles, and a future that felt open.

Most of all, I entered because I did not want the first version of my life to be the last one.