Last Saturday, the Campus Scouts of Virginia Tech held its annual Merit Badge College, where several badges are taught to over 175 Boy Scouts in one day. I was fortunate enough to teach the Computers merit badge to fifty or so Scouts, and, after a few days, some things have begun resonating.

Here are a few:

• Computers are just really exciting to me.

I was reading through the merit badge pamphlet, which provides information relevant to the badge requirements, and just looking at why the computer was need and created, and how it evolved from the UNIVAC to the 1981 IBM PC to the 1984 Macintosh to those of today was so fascinating and strangely exciting. While I prefer the software as a computer scientist, I love the idea of interacting with the hardware to do interesting things.

• Young people who are interested in computers are a treat to be around.

This does not include the kids who love computers so long as its web browser is pointed to addictinggames.com, but those that are interested in the history, how programs are made, where the future of computers lies, and that they get to be a part of that. They’re engaged with everything about what makes computers useful to society, and that’s what computer scientists are interested in. Some of the kids that were in my class are going to be computer scientists and good ones.

• Regardless of how the computer science experience goes, you have to be in it for the love of the game.

This thought was reinforced well in the week preceding the class, as I wasn’t able to solve a programming project problem for a class, and I had nothing to show for my project come time to turn it in as a result. It was a little demoralizing, because it didn’t seem terribly hard and it meant that there was something that I couldn’t do in my bread and butter area of interest, so to speak. Preparing for the class got me over it, though, because my interest was instantly reignited, and I wasn’t about to let one project derail an academic career, let alone a professional one.

We also know that computer science jobs have a large potential to be on the higher end of the pay scale. But few think very highly of a megabucks superstar athlete in it for the money instead of the game. If I’m not majoring in it for academic success or money, strictly speaking, why am I here? The enthusiasm of the kids in my class reminded me why I was in their place not long ago (at least in interest level), and why I had to return to that in order to be an effective ambassador for the field in general. There will always be people better at it than I, and some of those kids were, but my idiosyncratic interest has to be my driving force.