When I was in elementary school, I wanted to become Tony Stark.
The Years When I Wanted to Build Things but Couldn’t Get Started
After watching movies like 《Iron Man》 and 《Transformers》, I couldn’t stand how badly I wanted to make something. I built rubber band guns and looked up how various weapons worked. Looking back, I even searched the internet for the structures and physical principles behind things I shouldn’t have been making. I also created a Naver Band community with two middle-school friends, where we shared things we had made with more than 150 members.
I was also very interested in computers.
What I really wanted to build wasn’t something like a website or a game, but something closer to JARVIS from the movies. I wanted to put my own assistant into my computer. I wanted to create a program that could understand me when I spoke and do what I wanted for me.
But programming was a completely unknown world to me.
I didn’t even know what an IDE was, or where on earth you were supposed to write programs. Whenever I searched for something, the results were in English, and people around me said, “If you want to program, you have to be good at English first.”
As an elementary school student, I took that literally.
I thought I had to become good at English before I could program, become good at math before I could make anything, and get smart enough before I could even begin.
So I had a lot of questions, but I couldn’t get started.
Then one day, a friend took me to a teacher who ran gifted education programs at our school.
What I Should Have Learned Back Then
At the time, I wasn’t a child who did particularly well in school. I was endlessly interested in the knowledge needed for the things I wanted to make, but I wasn’t very interested in studying for school exams. When I heard “gifted education,” I naturally assumed it was a place for students who ranked first or second in their class. My parents said they couldn’t afford that kind of education, or robotics and electronics kits. I had the interest and passion to make things, but my circumstances didn’t support them.
Still, I wanted to learn something from that teacher.
But I couldn’t even properly solve a test asking about the order of operations for basic arithmetic. The teacher told me I might have difficulty keeping up, and I quickly lost confidence.
“Then I won’t do it.”
And that was the end of it.
At the time, I also took pride in being a taekwondo athlete, so I think I rationalized it by telling myself, as if it were no big deal, that I had other paths.
That is the exact moment when the multiverse I imagine branches off.
In that world, I endure the embarrassment just a little longer.
“I’m not very good at studying. But I really want to learn programming. Just tell me what I need to do.”
That is probably what I would have said.
And I wish I had learned how to teach myself from that teacher before learning programming itself.
What to search for when I encountered something I didn’t know, what to read among the search results, how to somehow read English materials—whether by using a translator or looking up words one by one—and where to find answers when an error message appeared.
Looking back now, what I really needed was neither extraordinary mathematical ability nor perfect English.
It was how to search, how to ask questions, and how to get started even when I didn’t understand something very well.
If I had learned that in elementary school, I think I would have been quite different as a middle school student.
Me in Another Multiverse
I would have gone to the computer as soon as school ended.
I would have memorized English vocabulary not to take exams, but to read answers on Stack Overflow and understand articles written by developers overseas.
I would have built a webpage, kept making strange programs, and taken apart the code people had posted online. I might have studied physics and chemistry to understand the principles behind the weapons and machines I was interested in, then tried making programs to simulate or calculate them.
Eventually, I would have discovered people online who were far better than me.
I think I would have sent emails, asked questions, joined communities, and gone looking for people while showing them the strange projects I had made.
At the time, I was fascinated by stories about people who started businesses at a young age.
Whenever I heard about a middle school student making money through a fashion business, a young entrepreneur starting a company, or people like Steve Jobs, my heart raced.
I don’t think I simply wanted to become rich.
I Wanted to Become Independent Quickly
I wanted to become independent quickly.
I wanted to become someone who could make money by creating something, and who could find and learn the knowledge I needed on my own, rather than living a life where someone else was responsible for me.
As a middle school student in that multiverse, I probably would have tried to make money by building at least one small web service.
It would have been much more likely to fail.
I might have built a website that no one visited, or spent months making a program that no one used. I might have gotten into a fight with someone who wanted to try making something together, or spent every day confirming that I was far more inadequate than I had thought.
Even so, I think I would have made the next thing.
Because at the time, I liked the fact that I was making something more than I cared about the result.
I probably would have faced a major conflict as I approached high school.
I would have wondered whether I should prepare for entrance exams like everyone else, or quit school and continue doing what I was doing.
I don’t know whether I really would have dropped out.
But at the very least, rather than spending all my time studying for exams to get into a good university, I think I would have spent much more time learning the skills I wanted and trying out projects and businesses.
What I spent money on would have been different too.
Instead of spending it on academies to raise my test scores, I would have spent it on learning programming, buying a computer, building projects, and going out to meet people.
And more than anything, I think I would have tried to trust my own choices a little more than my parents’ choices.
The Ability to Seek Out the People and Knowledge You Need
Looking back, I relied heavily on my parents at the time.
My parents compared me with my close friends, and I also thought, “My parents know the world better than I do, so they must be right. They’ll take responsibility for me later.”
So instead of studying to build skills that would last, I chose ways to get good scores on school exams right away. Rather than looking for the person who could best teach me what I wanted to learn, I looked for the teacher who could raise my test scores the fastest.
At the time, I barely knew how to look for any other options.
I was originally a child with a great many questions.
I couldn’t keep up with everything I was curious about just by following the pace of class, and I needed someone I could keep asking anything, like ChatGPT today. In fact, when I met a teacher who was a good fit for me, I asked an enormous number of questions.
But I didn’t know how to find good teachers.
The only method I knew was to ask my parents.
Perhaps the greatest ability I wish I had gained in that multiverse was this, rather than programming skill.
The ability to find the people and knowledge I need on my own.
If I had gained that power early, I would have met people through the internet much sooner, sought out people who were better than me and asked them questions, and looked for another way even when I failed.
Of course, that life would have involved losses too.
Would I Have Made the Same Choices If I Could Go Back?
I would have spent much less time attending school normally with my friends. I might never have had the experience of getting into a good university, spending college life with friends I met there, enjoying festivals, and hanging out together until late at night.
Even in that world, I probably would have thought from time to time:
‘Maybe I should have just gone to school normally too.’
So as I wrote this, I arrived at an unexpected conclusion.
At first, I thought I would regret not starting programming earlier.
But I began to think that even if I went back, I might ultimately have made similar choices.
The person I was then wasn’t the person I am now.
The information I had was different, the people around me were different, and I didn’t even know what options were available. Given those circumstances, I made the choice I could.
It probably wasn’t the fastest or most efficient path.
But along that path, I met friends and good teachers, and I also went through difficult times in my studies. Above all, I gained the experience of working on something until I reached the point where I thought, “I can’t do this anymore.”
In that process, I also developed one of my greatest strengths today: diligence.
At the same time, I developed the weakness of being bad at looking for faster ways because I was always working unconditionally hard.
So what I want to bring back from this multiverse isn’t the regret that ‘I should have been programming since elementary school.’
The Choices I Can Make Now
It is the attitude I wish I had adopted a little earlier back then.
Not thinking that I have to be good before I can begin.
Not believing that someone else knows the right answer for my life.
When I don’t know something, going directly to find people, asking questions, and trying to make something.
And after making a choice, taking responsibility for the result myself instead of leaving it to someone else.
Perhaps the life in the multiverse I imagined and my life now aren’t as far apart as I thought.
Because I can make the choices now that I couldn’t make back then.