The Influence Of Cartoons

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Have you ever tried learning English by reading a dictionary? I was a four-year-old immigrant that knew nothing about the English language and culture and it was all I could do. I knew nothing and could not do anything. English was not the only thing I struggled with during this time. When my mother gave birth to my little brother, a new family member was added to an already cramped apartment. The apartment was similar to a ten by ten cubicle, with the bathtub in the middle of the living room. Therefore, when guests were over, I could easily say hello while taking a shower.
As a kid, cartoons about futuristic technologies captivated and impacted me immensely. Cartoons like MegaMan had many gadgets that were not available at the time. However, over the years, I have grown alongside technology and noticed that these said cartoons heavily foretold society’s technological advances such as voice recognition programs like Siri, artificial intelligence projects like the ALICEbot and even touchscreen smartphones. In MegaMan, one has a Net-Navi, an artificial intelligence program that resides in phones and other handheld devices and aids the user in any task, a program that the ALICEbot may evolve into. This requires a strong voice recognition program, which Siri or the android alternative, Cortana, provides today. Looking at the technologies today and being heavily influenced by the cartoons and the technological world they presented, I chose a career of computer engineering and programming where I can a part of the growth and process. This was hard, especially when I did not receive a working computer until I was 13, unlike my other friends who had one from the small age of 3… I recognize that I need a heavy math and physics background for this goal. In school, I chose the hardest available courses for my grade level in those subjects and worked diligently. I believe this is not enough. And so, I applied to University of Pennsylvania’s Young Scholars program for free college courses during the week. I was accepted, however the course that I needed the most, Decision Theory, in order to learn the ways that a program may have in choosing a decision, was not available at the time due to unfortunate circumstances of the professor. Therefore, I chose Intro to Experimental Psychology, understanding that in order to create a humane and life-like artificial intelligence similar
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Now, to just pay the land tax and mortgage, my mom works in two jobs, often going over-time from 5pm to 4am and then 7 am to 3 pm. And so the cycle continues. I feel pitiful when I know that the me now is powerless and unable to provide any meaningful income. I tried working at a farm in summer of my sophomore year of high school but that money meant nothing once we added in electricity, gas and water fees. Understanding these circumstances, I had to figure out ways to climb up the social ladder without spending unnecessary money. Over the summer of my junior year in high school I noticed that there was a MIT edX Facebook page for Introduction to Computer Science using Python. Of course, I signed up and completed the course with a 95 overall. I feel like that is not that enough, so by taking advantage of the numerous free courses in edX, I started to learn more about programming than I did before, with courses like HTML and

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