TITLE: Finding the Torture You're Comfortable With
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: February 29, 2024  3:45 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 At some point last week, I found myself pointed to
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaSvlSHNJEk">
  this short YouTube video
</a>
 of Jerry Seinfeld talking with Howard Stern about work habits.
 Seinfeld told Stern that he was essentially always thinking
 about making comedy.  Whatever situation he found himself in,
 even with family and friends, he was thinking about how he
 could mine it for new material.  Stern told him that sounded
 like torture.  Jerry said, yes, it was, but...

<blockquote><em>
 Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you're
 comfortable with.
</em></blockquote>

 This is something I talk about with students a lot.

 Sometimes it's a current student who is worried that CS isn't
 for them because too often the work seems hard, or boring.
 Shouldn't it be easy, or at least fun?

 Sometimes it's a prospective student, maybe a HS student on a
 university visit or a college student thinking about changing
 their major.  They worry that they haven't found an area of
 study that makes them happy all the time.  Other people tell
 them, "If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in
 your life."  Why can't I find that?

 I tell them all that I love what I do -- studying, teaching,
 and writing about computer science -- and even so, some days
 feel like work.

 I don't use torture as analogy the way Seinfeld does, but I
 certainly know what he means.  Instead, I usually think of
 this phenomenon in terms of drudgery: all the grunt work that
 comes with setting up tools, and fiddling with test cases, and
 formatting documentation, and ... the list goes on.  Sometimes
 we can automate one bit of drudgery, but around the corner
 awaits another.

 And yet we persist.  We have found the drudgery we are comfortable
 with, the grunt work we are willing to do so that we can be part
 of the thing it serves: creating something new, or understanding
 one little corner of the world better.

 I experienced the disconnect between the torture I was comfortable
 with and the torture that drove me away during my first year in
 college.  As I've mentioned here a few times, most recently in
 <a href="https://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2024-01.html#e2024-01-06T10_41_54.htm">
    my post on Niklaus Wirth,
 </a>
 from an early age I had wanted to become an architect (the kind who
 design houses and other buildings, not software).  I spent years
 reading about architecture and learning about the profession.  I
 even took two drafting courses in high school, including one in
 which we designed a house and did a full set of plans, with
 cross-sections of walls and eaves.

 Then I got to college and found two things.  One, I still liked
 architecture in the same way as I always had.  Two, I most assuredly
 did not enjoy the kind of grunt work that architecture students had
 to do, nor did I relish the torture that came with not seeing a
 path to a solution for a thorny design problem.

 That was so different from the feeling I had writing BASIC programs.
 I would gladly bang my head on the wall for hours to get the tiniest
 detail just the way I wanted it, either in the code or in the output.
 When the torture ended, the resulting program made all the pain
 worth it.  Then I'd tackle a new problem, and it started again.

 Many of the students I talk with don't yet know this feeling.  Even
 so, it comforts some of them to know that they don't have to find
 The One Perfect Major that makes all their boredom go away.

 However, a few others understand immediately.  They are often the
 ones who learned to play a musical instrument or who ran cross
 country.  The pianists remember all the boring finger exercises
 they had to do; the runners remember all the wind sprints and all
 the long, boring miles they ran to build their base.  These students
 stuck with the boredom and worked through the pain because they
 wanted to get to the other side, where satisfaction and joy are.

 Like Seinfeld, I am lucky that I found the torture I am comfortable
 with.  It has made this life a good one.  I hope everyone finds
 theirs.
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