I still remember when the monitor first lit up and the grey box roared to my life. She had me at hello, or in this case, with the first welcome screen, circa 1999. Initially no one knew how to operate her. Out of curiosity, I worked days in front of her foreign face, eventually coming closer to her intricate soul. Trying out new DOS commands and seeing results became my greatest happiness. The complex visual calculations and efficiency on the computer brought me immediate satisfaction. While some kids defined the high points of their adolescent lives as learning to ride a bike or hitting a home run, my moment of change was switching from Windows 98 to XP. It was during this childhood that I established a passion for Computer Science.
Unfortunately, at the age of 13, I indulged in the online game, the Mysterious Land. The game played perfectly into my teenage whims: when I sought a sense of accomplishment, it rewarded me. Where I sought friends, it gave me an entire network of people relying on me. With just a little bit of focus, I reached the highest level, the peak of gaming perfection! In the first two years of middle school, I burnt the midnight oil and slept less than three hours in the weekend for the first time; with great guilt, I played truant for the first time; I even starved in order to use my lunch money to buy rechargeable cards. It sounds crazy now, but that addiction scratched my soul and demanded more. Undoubtedly, my grades fell so much that I went from the top to bottom.
After my astonishment when I first met with the crazily low scores, I became apathetic. After a ‘lovely’ summer vacation fulfilled with dazzling equipments and illusory friendships in Mysterious Land, I got in Grade Eight. I still played the whole night, sleeping in one class after another. Deeply addicted, I sometimes couldn’t find the differences between the real and the virtual world. So many times I acted like a bossy team leader while doing sports at school, thus many people had an unfavorable impression of me. However, the obstacles I met in real life only furthered my addiction: the less love and friends I got, the more I became convinced that I should devote myself to the game.
Nevertheless, the nightmares all came to an end when my class adviser looked deeply in my eye on getting my final results in the 8th grade. When I got home, I yelled out in the game but people deemed me insane instead of consoling me. A somber sadness embraced me, restricting my breath. I was caught and could not escape. That reality brought me back to life. Feeling fresh air around me instead of the vacuum of virtual happiness, I was freed.
Since then I began my struggle to abstain from Mysterious Land. I limited my game time from six hours to one hour step by step; I regulated my schedule and slept from 10p.m to 6a.m every day; I asked my parents to keep my pocket money, and I cleared all my debts in the game. When I finally felt myself far enough away from Mysterious Land, I believed everything was set. I opened the Program Files, clicked on the familiar folder, and pressed the delete button. At last, I clicked on YES with my shaking hand. “Goodbye.” I said in my heart, deeply lost in mind. On finishing this, I sat on my bed and watched screen-saver changing irregularly all night long. As soon as the sun rose at 5:50a.m and shone me with its first beam, I saw a new world opening its door to me.
Soon I rediscovered another aspect of my computer – programming. As I rode the tides of addiction, I also gained knowledge from the swelling sea of the internet, through which I met new programmer friends, exchanged ideas or even worked together for the common goal of understanding the cultural impact of technology. Devoting most my spare time to this aspect set off my passion, which burnt more fiercely than that of the game! Sharing my simple-functioned programs with friends, satisfaction enveloped me tighter than the Mysterious Land ever did. I kept learning the BASIC and other programming languages improving my logical thought process for academics and acting as a catalyst for the study of Mathematics and Science. With a new sense of determination, I managed to rediscover my past hobbies in engineering and rekindle my passion for art. With this acceleration, I returned to be one of the top students in my class.
I shall never forget the power I got when I pressed the YES button on the uninstall menu. The strength I got that time, I believe, has never gone away.
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