[ Chris Fallin ]
What's the point of all this school -- finishing undergrad in a rush to get on to the "interesting stuff" in grad school, becoming immersed in research, striving for academic excellence -- if it serves only me?
I don't do much good as a sponge, absorbing the material and then regurgitating it as I apply it in mundane day-to-day work, the deeper understanding within my brain guiding me but never precipitating into an externally useful form. Stimulating jobs, such as my two summers at Cypress, are a step higher: such jobs allow me to synthesize, allow me to use my creativity and intellect to solve interesting problems and, ultimately, create something new. But still, such creation serves ultimately only my employer and then my own wallet. This is fine and noble and, don't get me wrong, I need to make a living as much as the next guy. But there's probably more to be done.
The old adage goes something like this: "Give a man a fish, and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and feed him for a lifetime." I'd go so far as to say that to teach a craft is a step above simply practicing that craft at a fundamental level. If I stick to milking my own creativity and intellect as a day-job engineer, or even if I enter academia solely for the research, I am giving the world some fish, ready to eat. I might cause others to aspire to greater fish-catching by my particularly handy work on the seas, if I do a good job, but really I'm just another fisherman. I'd rather help to spread knowledge and understanding of, and appreciation for, my chosen field by initiating others as new, capable and (if I'm lucky) inspired engineers -- this will do far more good in the long run. I think this is true even moreso in a field like computer science, where fundamentals are so important and a solid grasp of them is becoming rare as the field is flooded with armies of mediocre coders.
Teaching can be a sacrifice -- in fact I know it's a sacrifice. My mother is an elementary-school teacher. (Incidentally, I think that's a far greater sacrifice than teaching at the college level.) And while I'd probably be pretty happy staying in a comfortable world and pushing out loads of good code, I think that, because I do well at compiling knoweldge and communicating it to others (in my experience so far), I have a duty, almost a mandate, to teach. In fact I don't think I could be truly at peace with the effort I've put into understanding software and hardware at a deep and intuitive level, over half of my life, if it were to stay locked in my head forever, never to benefit anyone else.
I need to teach. I am a worker of knowledge, a pursuer of curiosity and a creator in the realm of pure thought-stuff. If I let that stay in my head, what's the point? I help no one. I have the possibility to impact a lot of people in a powerful and beautiful way if I set myself to it. The ultimate way to achieve this: University professor. Really, I see no other way for me. So I make my goal known and set forth to grad school.