Scholarship Essay Computer Essay 2008 by Gloria Branch Directron 2008-Best Computer Online Store Houston Buy Discount Prices Texas-Directron.com

Essay by Gloria Branch

Directron Scholarship 2008 Essay No. 05

by Gloria Branch
Current School: The Community College of Philadelphia
Current Major: American Sign Language

My name is Gloria Branch. My birth date is September 19, 1986. I plan to attend The Community College of Philadelphia to acquire my associate's degree in American Sign Language, I will then transfer to Rosemont College to pursue a bachelor's and master's in Deaf Studies. I plan to work to further improve the cultural relations between the hearing and deaf communities. I am currently in the enrollment process at the Community College of Philadelphia. I am a non-traditional student returning to school after four years. I was unable to pursue a degree when I graduated from high school because my family home was condemned by the city leaving my mother, my siblings and I homeless. I had to go to work to help my mother provide for my family. Fortunately my absence from school and education has only made my heart grow fonder. I understand the value of an education. It is a way for me to positively contribute to creating a better community by reaching for my dreams and inspiring others to do the same.

I actually thought this would be easy. Computers are pretty easy to write about. Lots of material, they're everywhere, this should be no problem. I started brainstorming. In the first story I decided to write there was an evil psychopathic psychiatrist who was also a computer chip genius (extremely far-fetched, I now realize) invented a biotechnology type chip that controlled habits such as blocking the desire to smoke or over eat or more serious behavioral problems like curing psychopathic murders by controlling the murderous part of their brain. The doctor, Dr. Arlington plots to put these chips into the brains of all the inmates in a high security prison. He will then control them all and use them to do evil deeds; the chips are all connected to one computer that Dr. Arlington controlled. And that's where that story died. It's quite obvious I had no plot. How would this doctor have control of a prison full of murderous criminals? I don't even know correct terminology for this type of story, what is the correct name for the murderous part of the brain? Delete! I decided to do some research. I Google searched computers. Once I got through the jungle of people trying to sell me computers I spotted Wikipedia and went in for a closer look. It described a computer as a machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. Not much to see there. I then decided to investigate what new developments were being made in the world of data manipulating machines in hopes of inspiration. I encountered headlines about the Fannie Mae programmer who allegedly embedded a virus into the Fannie Mae network. That could be interesting I thought a virus. Maybe I could incorporate the virus and the chips. People get the chips in their brains to control behavior but the chips malfunction... or better yet someone hacks into the chips and takes control of everyone's brain. The problem, it was the same story as the evil Dr. Arlington only even more vague. I couldn't figure out why anyone would get the chips. They got them from the government, how unpredictable. Stupid chips! I was done with them. I still needed some inspiration for this story so I decided to explore other stories about computers. Most of them were horror stories which I found fitting. I read about a woman who took a computer training class to brush up on her office skills. After the first day she was excused from the class and banned from the facilities. She had accidentally entered a command into her computer that caused every printer in the building to print incessantly. It took every technician on the premise to get it to stop. She never touched a computer again in her life. I found a website about the stupid people who use computers but know nothing about them. There were words like Pentium, 386, DOS, Megs, RAM it went on and on. My brain actually started to hurt because the extent of my ignorance was inconceivable. All this time I'd been doing research and I was still no closer to understanding the subject. I took a break. I tossed a load of clothes in the wash and trimmed down a stack of dishes. I read my boyfriends issue of Popular Mechanics. I saw an ad for an Extremes of Nature magazine which got me thinking about global warming. That gave me an idea. I was tired but determined not to quit. My muse had spoken to me and I needed to run with the idea before it faded from my exhausted brain. A miserable, broke, pathetic loser gets an email saying "want to disappear, make it happen, one click away". At first the guy thinks its spam so he trashes it. He gets the email again after his car is impounded for unpaid tickets. He still thinks its spam. He does wish it were possibly to get away. He hates his job and has no life just debt and misery. The next day on the way home from work he's robbed of the few dollars he had left. Luckily it's the weekend so the guy doesn't have to figure out a way to get to work with no car and no money. He makes it home, grabs his laptop and a beer and settles down to enjoy some adult entertainment. He was just robbed; I've got to give him something. He's overwhelmed with a sense of lowliness when he gets a pop up. It says the same thing as the email "want to disappear, make it happen, one click away". He has nothing to loose anymore so he clicks, expecting to see a screen telling him he's won a trip to Jamaica for only $499. Instead he's redirected to a website that seems to be downloading every piece of information about him; birth certificate, social security number, emails, subscriptions, medical records, unpaid tickets, pay stubs, even a receipt for the noodles from the corner store. After about fifteen minutes of downloading volumes of information everything stops, the screen flashes and a warning comes up ANY AND ALL INFORMATION CONTAINING EVIDENCE OF YOUR EXISTENCE HAS BEEN GATHERED AND IS READY FOR DELETION. YOU WILL NO LONGER EXIST. YOU WILL HAVE NO IDENTITY. YOU WILL BE FREE. PRESS DELETE WITH THAT IN MIND.

His pinky finger hovers above the button. His eyes close as he presses the button. The screen flashes and goes black. Another message appears on the screen.

At that point I saved the story. I was content with my progress. I knew why it was possible. After Barack Obama became President of the USA everything went wireless. All records and documents were uploaded onto a computer program to eliminate excessive paper usage in one of the many efforts to reduce carbon emissions and preserve more trees. Since all information was gathered essentially in one place it actually made it possible to delete all information about any one person. I liked the idea because I often fantasize about deleting my existence and starting over. I needed to sleep on it though. I didn't know what happened next. I thought I'd let the computer give him a new identity. Send the guy away somewhere, maybe Australia, to a new life, but as what. I needed to give him a job. What could he do? He was a loser for a reason. Maybe the email had targeted him specifically because he was a loser. It knew from all the information it had about him that he was a perfect for its plan. I just needed a plan. I went to sleep hoping my subconscious or super- conscience would give me a cool dream that would complete the story and make it awesome. The next morning I woke up, ate breakfast to fuel my brain and got ready to finish the story. I logged onto my laptop, went to Microsoft word and went to pull up the half completed document. It wasn't there. I didn't see it. I didn't panic because I knew I'd saved it, I remembered naming the file Escape. I searched all my documents extensively. Nothing! It was gone. All my work had simply vanished. I was devastated to say the least. I couldn't start it all over again. I started to melt down, have a temper tantrum and give up altogether. That's when my screen saver came up. It was a picture of the Amazon Rainforest with the quote, "Losers always quit, but look what winners get" captioning it. I'd chosen that screen saver because it's my dream to go to the Amazon and it helped encourage me not to give up on anything I wanted. I could give up on the story and blame my stupid laptop for ruining my creative genius, and always remember this experience as the time a data manipulating machine got the best of a mere mortal once again. Or, I could see that my laptop wasn't trying to thwart my efforts, it just knows better then me and helped me write a better story. Hey that's an idea, a story about a computer program that plans your life, every move you need to make to get you into the perfect career, it will even help you write stories that will win contests to help you pay for school. Hmmmm...

References: | Directron.com College Scholarship |

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