For the past two weeks, I have done nothing but complain and stress over my PL/SQL homework.
Now before you let those eyes wander off this article and onto another editorial that uses acronyms that you understand, be patient with me, I shall explain myself.
PL/SQL stands for Procedural Language/Structured Query Language. Stop it; I know you are tempted to stop reading right now. But hang on. It’s basically a bunch of computer code, whose sole purpose is to search a database and annoy the heck out of me.
The homework assignments take forever. It can take hours to write 30-plus lines of code to produce a single search (select) statement – which generally returns only a few rows (entries in the database). So naturally the logical thing to do is put the homework off as long as I can.
To top it all off, the database in which we search contains nothing but “Star Trek” terminology and information due to our professor’s love of the subject.
While there are in fact life lessons to be learned from “Star Trek” (but this is another editorial altogether), there are times when I wish the Borg would just come along and wipe the entire Starfleet out. Why can’t I do a Borg database? That sounds easier doesn’t it? No extensive employee records there!
Last week, I spent the entire week worrying about it, I had put it off until last minute, or so I thought.
When I heard those glorious words from my classmate Thursday night, “that isn’t due ’til next Friday” I knew I was doomed to yet another week of procrastination and dread. I could have worked on it that night just to get ahead anyway. But oh no! I had another entire week to finish the assignment! This week, it has been the same story. That Friday at noon deadline is creeping up every second, and yet, here I sit, writing an editorial complaining about it instead of actually working on the problem.
Now, once Thursday night rolls around, I will be making progress. I can see it now; the first hour will be spent with a blank stare on my face.
The next hour I will begin typing in some meaningless computer jargon, occasionally taking frustration-induced breaks to smack myself in the side of the head with the keyboard a few times.
The next half hour I will most likely spend deleting all of the strange characters that registered whilst hitting myself in the head with the keyboard.
Then, somehow, in the midst of the madness, a miraculous thing occurs, recognizable, halfway-functioning code will begin to form on the screen.
Nothing is perfect at first, it takes many more hours to debug and get everything working properly. It usually takes approximately four hours, seven keyboard head-banging breaks, and two phone calls to other classmates to finish the project up.
Finally, when it is all said and done – the mini-program spits out the answer I was looking for – sometimes a single output.
Example: Input: 40-lines of terrible looking computer code with four hours of cold hard sweat poured into it.
Output: ‘Spock.’
And I think, you know, that is just like life. Most of us feel as if we are always searching for something. Sometimes we put the search off to do other things – many times we dread actually putting any effort into what we seek.
Even when we are ready to embrace our destiny (destiny being PL-SQL code, of course) we may run into bugs. But like any good programmer, if we try hard enough, and with some help and guidance, those bugs may be remedied, our search will become more refined, our code will be more usable and the thing that we had been searching for, for so long, will be revealed to us (meaning Spock).
The best thing we can do is to just get out there and start searching! Resistance is futile!
What lies ahead for me? I am still not entirely sure, but I hope it is not in Klingon when I find it (but you never know).
But I know that no matter how long I put it off, or wait around waiting for it to magically reveal itself to me. Eventually, we will find the answer we have been looking for.
So until then, my friends: Live long, and prosper.

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