Horrifying. That about describes my first art class. As a computer science major with virtually no art experience I was surrounded by students who had devoted nearly every waking moment to drawing, painting, sculpting, and bending metal into non-functional shapes.

The second class was the worst. Our assignment was to create something in Photoshop and print it out with virtually no instruction. Easy enough I chuckled to myself.

It was 1996, and the school computers had two browsers: Netscape Navigator 1.1, and Mosaic. There was no Wi-Fi, and the dorm rooms had no Internet hook up. Photoshop created files so big you needed Zip, or hot-off-the-press Jaz drives (remember those?) to store your massive 10 to 20-megabyte files! I smugly felt I had a huge leg up in owning my own computer, knowing how to use it, and having "hacked" the dorm phone system to get Internet in my room so I could more easily do research.