High School & Hello World struggle

When my first programming class began, I didn’t even know the definition of a computer. I was a pre-med student in high school which I didn’t attended much as there was no attendance issues so from my academic habits no one could even imagine that this dude is going to choose CS . I always was interested in computer and tech though my parents never bought me a pc thinking I wouldn’t study if I get it little did they know that’s what I want to study I wanted to learn computer so bad I sold my phone for it and all the time I was in 12th I didn’t had a phone but even on my PC I used to watch videos about computer components and do video editing which I even carried with me as a professional for couple of months but I wasn’t into that software engineering things , so terms like “variable” or “console” sounded like sci-fi. On day one, our teacher asked us to write “Hello, World!” in C++. I stared at the screen like it was an alien language.

Spoiler: it took me the whole class just to get that line to work.

The Pre-Med Squad in a CS World

I wasn’t alone. I was part of a group of four — all ex-pre-med students — who had jumped into Computer Science without the faintest idea of how code worked. We were the “bio gang” in a sea of techies.

Assignments? Projects? We had no clue. Most of the time, we were running to seniors for help, asking them to explain for loops like they were life-saving procedures.

The Turning Point

Somewhere along the way, something clicked. Maybe it was the late nights debugging code with friends, maybe it was the rush of finally getting a program to run, or maybe it was realizing that coding wasn’t the scary monster I thought it was. I would say that’s I started enjoying to code instead of treating it as a subject .

I stopped seeing programming as a threat and started treating it like a puzzle — one I could actually solve if I just kept trying.

From Struggling to Scoring

By the end of the semester, I didn’t just survive — I thrived. I ended up with a 4.0 GPA in Programming Fundamentals. The same person who once struggled to print “Hello, World!” was now writing complete programs without fear.

The Takeaway

Starting from zero isn’t a weakness — it’s proof that growth is possible. I began as a clueless pre-med student who barely knew what a computer was, and in just a few months, I had not only learned the basics but excelled at them.

If you’re starting your CS journey feeling lost, remember this: the learning curve is steep, but every step up is worth it.