Back Where It Started (Special First Entry)

Oct 12, 2026 · @Arman

I'm thrilled to be starting as the Technology Coordinator at Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) Manhattan. It's a homecoming of sorts: BHSEC is where I earned my associate's degree, and it's also where this story begins. As I settle in, I can't help but reflect on the path that brought me back.

The Tech Guy Who Chose Medicine

You might not know this, but I never planned to study computer science. When I enrolled at CUNY Hunter College, I wanted to pursue medicine. Hunter's reputation for strong pre-medical courses and faculty was a big part of why I chose it.

That's a little funny in hindsight, because technology had always been my thing. I was the go-to tech person for family and friends. During the pandemic, my side hustle was buying broken phones and laptops, refurbishing them, and reselling them on eBay and other online marketplaces.

Still, I declared biochemistry my freshman year. Part of that came from a real curiosity about biology and chemistry. The other part came from my Organic Chemistry teacher during my second year at BHSEC. My grades in his class weren't great, but he noticed how curious I was, how consistently I participated, and how much effort I put into his coursework, and he encouraged me to consider medicine.

He saw something real in me. Looking back, I just pointed it at the wrong subject, and I wish I had stayed open to more options before committing. Roundabout as it sounds, that's where my computer science story actually began.

Alarm Bells and a Best Buy Floor

At Hunter, I threw myself into my studies. I took Organic Chemistry I and ended up with the same result I'd gotten at BHSEC. Even with the alarm bells ringing, I convinced myself I could still make it work.

Meanwhile, I was working part-time as a sales associate at Best Buy, talking with all kinds of customers about what was new in consumer electronics and what would actually fit their needs. I'd explain the driver size in a pair of headphones, the performance gap between an RTX 5060 and a 5070, or why someone needed an audio interface to connect their microphone to a desktop setup. Somewhere along the way, I realized I was enjoying work more than school.

When my second semester of Orgo came back even worse than the first, I knew something had to change. I thought, "I'm passionate about technology and electronics. Why not study something connected to that?" That was the push I needed to switch to computer science.

Everything Clicked

My first class was Introduction to Computer Science with Professor Melissa Lynch. It covered the fundamentals of Python, along with core concepts like loops, recursion, and time complexity, and everything just clicked. The difference between how I did in computer science and how I'd done in biochemistry was night and day.

If Professor Lynch's class was the appetizer, the courses that followed were the main course. I fell in love with the mathematics of computing in Professor Erick's Theory of Computation class. I learned about formal languages and automata theory, and how ideas from linguistics, like Chomsky normal form, helped make modern compilers possible. It was a reminder that the liberal arts and computer science are more connected than most people think.

In Professor Shankar's computer architecture class, I learned about registers, clock cycles, and transistors, and I started seeing the products I sold at Best Buy differently. Knowing that decades of scientific progress were packed inside a $600 laptop made me even more excited to be part of this field.

From Hunter to the Classroom

During my final year at Hunter College, I interned for a year as the tech liaison at P.S. 017Q Henry D. Thoreau in Astoria. That's where I learned that the best part of technology isn't the hardware. It's the moment a teacher's lesson runs without a hitch, or a student's laptop finally connects, because someone made it work behind the scenes.

Back Where It Started

Which brings me back to BHSEC. This time, I'm not the student struggling through Organic Chemistry. I'm the person keeping the school's technology running for the next group of students who are still figuring out who they want to be.

My Orgo teacher was right about me: I did have a curious mind and a willingness to put in the work. I just needed a few detours to find where those things belonged. That experience taught me something I still believe: talent may point you toward what you could do, but passion should decide what you want to do. In computer science, I was lucky enough to find both.

So to any student who feels like they're on the wrong path: you probably haven't wasted anything. Stay curious, try different things, and pay attention to what you'd happily do even when nobody's grading you. For me, it was helping a stranger find the right laptop at Best Buy. Who knows what it'll be for you.

I'm excited to get started, and I can't wait to share what this year at BHSEC brings.