In my second year in graduate school, I took a computer course and that was like lightening striking.

Nelson describes a sudden, transformative moment of intellectual conversion: encountering computing not as a mere technical skill but as a new medium for thought. The metaphor of lightning suggests immediacy and irrevocability—an insight that reorganizes one’s sense of what is possible. In Nelson’s case, such an awakening aligns with his later preoccupation with hypertext and “literary” computing: computers as tools for structuring, linking, and revising ideas rather than just calculating. The quote highlights how pivotal exposure—one course, one year—can redirect a scholarly trajectory, turning graduate study into a launching point for a new conceptual vocation.