Why I Do What I Do

It is not that I feel any need to justify myself. I do not believe I have to explain, let alone excuse. I think however it is good for me, if for nobody else, on occasion, to try and set down 'why I do what I do'. By this I mean, why I am an academic and why I am a computer scientist. I do not think I can do this as some sort of coherent argument, so instead I will opt for snapshots, for those moments when it all seems to make sense. Make of them what you will.

A doctoral student arrives at my office and tentatively opens a laptop. "I have had an idea. I don't know if it is going to work ... nobody has tried it before but it seems to make sense ...".

I am sitting, naked, in a hot bath, overfilled with flushed Japanese scientists, looking out over a snow crusted mountain and trying to explain my views on software specification. 

I walk into the front entrance to the College, it is cold and dry and the cherry tree that formerly stood outside my office is in blossom. 

I meet a former student on the tube, they are working in IT for a large investment bank. "I use that stuff you taught me" they say, in a surprised tone. 

I am the first person to address a colleague as 'Professor'. 

I pick up a paper I have been asked to review. I do not know the authors but they are using my software. 

I am walking between meetings and have a spare ten minutes to spend guiltlessly in a second-hand bookshop. 

I am at a management meeting and a colleague from the opposite end of the disciplinary spectrum dissects an issue that had been troubling me with wit, clarity and an analytical skill honed through their scholarship. 

I am in the Senior Common Room, eating a cheese and tomato baguette, drawing speculative and unjustified analogies between computing and the life sciences. 

The hoarding is erected around the site of a building project and a plan starts to become a reality. 

"We are pleased to inform you that you paper has been accepted for ..." 

A spring day, drinking coffee and discussing science with friends, at a cafe near the University of Vienna, sensing history and family memory pulling at my sleeve. 

Reading the reviews in the Times Higher and successfully resisting the temptation to buy the book. 

parse error before `printf' 

A diagram on a whiteboard that made sense when I did it and 24 hours later makes no sense whatsoever.