Member-only story
Introducing Paul Ryburn
Happy to be living my passion. Happy to be alive.
“Introduction to me” posts seem to be all the rage these days. I think they’re great, and I have read some fantastic posts of this type the past couple of weeks. It’s a pleasure to get to know the person behind the writing, to make an emotional investment in the writer.
Therefore, I have decided to join the party! In this post I will
- Talk about two of my passions
- Explain why this post, and my entire body of work on Medium, almost didn’t happen
- Give you some fun, quick facts about me
- Introduce you to a few books that have been major influences
Let’s get started!
I’m a teacher
When I was 11, I saved up enough money to buy an Atari 2600 video game console, the must-have for kids my age at the time. Within a year, I wanted an Atari 400 personal computer, because it played a more authentic version of Pac-Man. My mom wouldn’t buy it for me, though. “You already have a video game system,” she told me. “You don’t need another one.”
Instead of buying a computer, I bought a book on BASIC, the programming language built into the Atari 400’s operating system. Every time we went to Sears or JCPenney or any store that sold the computer, I typed in a program that would draw a rainbow on the screen, or play a number guessing game.
Pretty soon my mom realized there might be a future for me with computers. After a little planning with my grandparents, I got an Atari 400 computer for my 13th birthday.
I spent most of my high school years programming computers and it was pretty clear computer science would be my major in college. There was no singular computer science major at the time, so I bridged it with math at Rhodes College in Memphis. I was hardly a standout undergrad student, earning mostly Bs and Cs.
… Until, that is, I took senior seminar for the mathematics half of my major. Each of us had to give three presentations on mathematical…
