Why Explain It All?
Why did I start my YouTube channel? Why “Explains It All”?
Ok, storytime
I day dream all the time. Needless to say, I was never an A student. I usually got B’s or C’s (my sister was an A student, but more on that later). It wasn’t until my second semester in a community college, when I got straight A’s for the first time. STRAIGHT A'S!! It felt so good. I wonder if this rush is the reason overachievers do it (I am looking at you, sis). That rush did it for me, because after that semester, I made a pact with myself and promised I would only get A's for the rest of my college years. Little did I know how long it was going to take me to graduate… I took my challenge and many math, science, advanced math, university science, and computer science classes later (six and a half years to be exact) I graduated with all A's and two A-'s (I will never get over this Dr. Willis).
But why am I talking about my grades? Other than bragging, I promise it is all connected.
To be able to get all A's I had to learn how to study. Yup! I did not know how to study. In college. So, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to prep for a math test, memorize theoretical concepts for biology, and how to combine these studying methods to prep for a computer science test. I noticed that all of my studying methods had one thing in common: after studying by myself for a week, I would then go to the lab and try to explain it to my classmates. Sure, it looks really nice of me because of the free tutoring, but it was a bit of a selfish act. I needed to explain things to someone to be able to know that I actually knew what I was talking about. I knew that if I could explain and answer questions about a topic, then I had understood it and it was embedded in my brain forever. So I studied two weeks before every test. One week to study by myself and one week to explain it all to my friends in the lab. Explaining it all! See? It is all tying up together. And this is how I got my A’s.
THE CALL
A couple years after graduating, as a young software engineer, I got THE CALL. THE call from Google (a recruiter not the search engine which would be both terrifying and cool). This was IT! This was my dream - I had seen the movie "The Internship" and I knew that I wanted the "Googler life". And so, the interview process began. The first interview was that same day over the phone, I passed. The next technical round was a couple of days later on hangouts, I passed. Then, I got a call from the recruiter who told me that the third and last round would be in person at the Google offices in NYC. As the recruiter was telling me more about the next interview, I was sweating profusely - if there is anything I hate most in the world are white board technical interviews. Both as an interviewee and interviewer (more on that later). He gave me a list of things to study before the interview (which was basically everything I learned in four years of computer science), and mentioned that I could take as long as I wanted to study for the next interview. "As long as I want?", I asked. "Up to six months", he said. So naturally, anxious me said: “I’ll take it!! I'll talk to you in six months”. Six Months. I got all the algorithm and coding interview books I could find. And... that is all I did during the first month. I could feel the procrastinator's anxiety rising. Another month passed with me reading a chapter here and there. And while half watching a documentary on Netflix, I thought about my college years and realized I wasn't studying the way I know. I was studying, but I didn't feel confident enough about it since I was not explaining anything to anyone. How would I know if I was ready to explain things to the interviewers at Google?
YouTube
I decided to make tutorials of what I was studying and upload them to the scariest place I could think of: YouTube. Why scariest? Not because I was putting myself out there, no no, but because this is the place where the nerds of the internet live. I knew that if I messed anything up, I would get spammed with "Well actually..." in the comments. I thought, if I can make a video where no one can correct me, then I covered everything, got it right, and I know that I know it. I made algorithm and data structure videos. I explained how they are structured, how they work, and gave code examples. And after my first three videos, I was hooked. I wanted to make videos. I had unknowingly rekindled my passion of someday becoming a renowned filmmaker-ballerina-punk-rocker. Who also loves tech.
Thanks, but no thanks
I made computer science videos. Then I started exploring electrical engineering. So I made videos of that too. Time passed, I heard back from Google, and I told them that I found my true passion and am no longer interested. So both thank you Google and no thanks.
So now you know. Why Explains It All? Because I loved that 90’s TV show: Clarissa Explains It All. And also, because I explain things to learn. So if you catch me explaining something, that is because I am studying that something. And why YouTube? Because it is the scariest and most exhilarating place on the internet.