John Leeds

Whitman College students tell their stories—about their unique experiences in choosing Whitman and being part of the Whitman community and what they love most. This is John’s story.

John Leeds is a sophomore from Austin, Texas, majoring in computer science. He is a speed typing wiz, a Rubix cube extraordinaire, and a swimmer among other things. John found Whitman to be perfect because the same opportunities he found in Austin, Texas is what he’s finding here in our tight-knit community. 

The “Our Whitman, My Story” podcast is a collaboration between the Whitman College Office of Communication and author and podcaster John Moe ’90. To meet more of our talented students follow Whitman on social media.

Transcript

Everyone at Whitman has a story to tell; how they got here and what happened once they did, and every story is different.

Hi everybody, I'm John Leeds. I'm from Austin, Texas. This is Our Whitman: My Story.
I really got pretty lucky to be honest. I wasn't planning on applying here because I hadn't heard of it. I had my list of schools, and then my mom was like, "You got to apply to one more. Just apply to Whitman." And I was like, "Okay, mom." Once I got here, I ended up really loving it, so I just got lucky.

The reason I picked Whitman really came down to the culture. There were a lot of schools that I really liked, but the swim team was the friendliest. The reason that I really liked the swim team is that they were all just really enthusiastic, both about swimming and just their experience here at Whitman.

I started typing when I was nine or 10. It was really pretty strange. I started because my mom just sent me a link to a typing test and I did it. And then I was like, "Oh, I think I could do this faster." So I did it again, and then the next day I came back to it later, and I just kept doing typing tests. I can't really say why. I guess it was really my version of watching TV or doing nothing. Eventually, I got frustrated with my typing speed just because I hit the first plateau and I completely ditched everything I know.

Pretty much everybody in the US types with the QWERTY keyword layout, but I read about the Dvorak keyboard layout, so I picked that up instead. The Dvorak keyboard layout is just an alternate layout of the keys. So instead of resting your hands on ASDF, it'll be AOEU. You need to move your fingers less. At the time I thought that it would make me faster, but there's really no evidence that it's faster.

I kept practicing with that until eventually I was 10 or 11 and I could already type two keyboard layouts at a hundred words per minute, which is really weird looking back at it. After that, I just never really stopped, and eventually, by the time I was 15 or 16, I was the fastest one in the world with the Dvorak keyboard layout.

They test and verify typing speed. There's three different websites that people compete on. I was pretty much the fastest on all three with Dvorak. Also, people require verification videos just to make sure you're not cheating because obviously it's fairly easy to cheat in typing games. My high speed for one minute of sustained typing is 210 words per minute with Dvorak and 160 with QWERTY.

I was motivated just because I was competitive. It was kind of a way to compete outside of swimming. It was fun, but it was almost more like something like solving a jigsaw puzzle where it was just a way to shut my brain off.

I started with Rubik's Cubes for a fairly similar reason. It's actually kind of a funny story because I picked them up on and off for many years until I actually solved one. I think I was 13 when I finally solved one for the first time. It's not even like I was figuring it out on my own; I was just following a YouTube video, but it was really difficult for me. But after I solved it the first time, it was kind of a similar story where I was like, "I think I could do this faster." So I just solved it over and over again, and that became a big part of my life.

More than just solving a Rubik's cube in the standard way, I was interested in blindfolded solving. That's what I practiced more. It's really hard to explain, even when I can show you, but especially through audio, it's hard to explain, but you're basically just swapping two pieces at a time and you memorize that information by turning the locations on the Rubik's Cube into letters, and then you turn those letters into images. So if I had the letter pair C-W, I might imagine a cow sitting on my couch, and then there'd be something in my TV and I would just follow a path like that, and that information would tell me how to solve the Rubik's Cube.
When I was practicing, it would take me about a minute and a half total. So 45 seconds to memorize it and then 45 seconds to solve it. Unfortunately, I could definitely not pull that out right now. I would need to relearn how to do it, and even then it'd probably take me five minutes just because I haven't practiced that short-term memory.

It might be surprising, but I think that the adjustment for me as someone who's been homeschooled has been really, really easy. I think probably easier than people who had a more traditional school upbringing, which is partially because I'm just used to being forced to manage my time. When I was homeschooled, I was primarily taking classes at a community college, so I was just more used to the school format than most people coming in.
Oh man, what have my favorite classes been? I've really loved all my classes. I was surprisingly close with my Latin professor just because I walked into school not really wanting to take Latin, but then she made the class great. She laid out a class in a way that I really appreciated just because everything was really clear and objective.

Looking back at it, both of my hobbies that I really focused on for a long time involved intense concentration for a long period of time. It was really strange because this last summer I learned that it was because of ADHD, which I had no idea I had ADHD because my parents were, "Hey, he can focus on this relatively boring task for a really long time," but on the flip side, I did have the attention deficit side when it came to school when I wasn't particularly interested in it. So it was really not being able to regulate what I was paying attention to.
Looking back on it I think that it's had such a positive impact on my life just because I love having that ability to hone in what I'm interested in. Plus with the use of medication, now I love school too.

I think that I'm going to major in computer science and I might do something with economics too. Once again, computer science is just very algorithmic, which is exactly like a Rubik's Cube. People always say, "Oh, you can type fast. Of course, you got to do a computer science. Switch." Typing fast doesn't really help that much with computer science, but I get it, you got to say it.

I love Walla Walla and particularly Whitman. I grew up in Austin, which is a big city. I don't really love big cities, but I liked having all the opportunities that came with being there. Whitman's kind of perfect because I have a lot of those same opportunities but in a smaller setting.

What do I hope to do after Whitman? I used to be convinced that I was just going to coach swimming after school because it was the only interest I had that I could turn into a job, but now that I'm really interested in computer science and economics, there are a lot more doors open, so I'll need to figure that out in four years or so.

I think someone who's passionate does well here. You're going to find people to be friends with anywhere, but I think students at Whitman are particularly friendly and they have areas that they are very passionate about.

I'm John Leeds, and this has been Our Whitman: My Story. There are more episodes of Our Whitman: My Story available right now wherever you get your podcasts. For more information, go to whitman.edu/stories.

Music for this episode provided by the band Wind-Up Birds, which is made up entirely of current Whitman College students.