As a young twenty something millennial, when you're around this age, it's the perfect time to go soul searching, especially for what you want to do the rest of your life. Some people have their big break sooner than others, but you want to do everything you can to make it your time as well. It's not an easy road to get to the top, and I am not quite there yet. I thought I knew what I wanted to do from an early age, but when I got into my field, I confirmed with myself my heart is somewhere else. I'm not going to give up and want to share my story of how I at least got to where I am now so others can feel like they aren't alone in this. Enjoy!
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Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to be happy all the time hand have everyone else around you feel the same? But how do you get yourself into the proper environment away from drama, especially one conducive for following your dream and being able to go soul searching?
For much of my life, I thought I wanted to be a web developer, sit in a desk, and live the life in my safe cushion job. Little did I know, when I entered the workforce, this environment would be much different than I expected, for worse.
When I was about 12 years old, my twin sister and I had created our first website under the direction of our childhood friend, Kyle because him and his older brother taught themselves how to code and became experts. Kyle and Ryan would show my sister and me their newest creations, but wouldn’t exactly explain what they did. Thus, my sister and I went to the library to check out some books on web development and Photoshop. Unfortunately, I felt the progress with understanding the coding was slow and passions lied elsewhere at the time. I was still curious, but not enough to be super serious about it; something felt like it was missing in terms of my passion for programming. Down the road, Kyle helped us create 3 websites, which we basically only know how to make small tweaks and add content. When high school came around, I had wanted to try taking a programming class. Since my math scores were high, it was recommended for me to register for the advanced level. That was a complete mistake; I ended up only passing the class with lots and lots of help from a tutor and having a friend who gave me the answers to the number of assignments I fell behind on and wouldn’t have been able to complete otherwise. After that, I adopted the mindset of “this stinks, let’s see if I do any better in college and wait to take classes then”. That of course also ended up being a horrible idea, but I triumphed anyway.
I ended up studying Web Development (with a business minor) at Illinois State University. When it came for my first programming course, bad luck struck me once again. Programming was much different than I expected it to be and something still felt like it was missing. Not only was my passion not glowing, but my grade in the class went down the toilet due to handwritten coding exams being an awful experience for me, as well as not fully understanding the material. Thanks to my resilience, I took the class again instead of dropping the major, but requested to take it with another professor and earned an A. I had a similar, but worse issue with my first actual web development class, but was stuck taking the class with the same professor and barely passed the second time. Despite the evilness of handwritten programming exams, my overall grade point average was pretty high for the department and enough to be eligible for all scholarships and internships/jobs. I was still excelling in the department nonetheless. I earned several scholarships, eventually ran the club, raised money to send myself and 3 others to a national conference almost singlehandedly, setup a career fair, worked as a TA for one of the professors, did the research symposium and mobile application development contests, and I was basically the face of the IT department my senior year. I was having a lot of success, but the thought of web development being my niche still sat funny with me. I still loved programming, but other hobbies of mine give me more of a spark and enjoyment.
With the job market being rough, I had a goal of landing a (corporate) job before graduation; I achieved that goal about 3 weeks prior to graduating. When I walked into the door at my first big girl job on day 1, everything started as feeling like unicorns and rainbows. I felt successful, on top of the world, and like a champion. A few short months later, after a lot of post-graduation depression, personal issues, and difficulty getting myself up to speed with my workload, the rainbows rapidly faded as I did everything to avoid being jaded. More time elapses at my job and I needed a change in scenery, which later led me to doing an internal transfer to a different team with a more compatible manager. It didn’t take long for the rainbows to fade again. I began realizing how badly I was failing at my job and have been taking action to find and create a positive change for myself. I also became aware that the cubicle life is not my dream either.
Resilience has been my best friend for as long as I can remember. The farther I fall in my career in IT, the more accepting I am of failure. But why would I accept failure? I didn’t lose everything, nor have I lost this fight because I am still going. I haven’t totally fallen on my face, but with failure, I have realized and confirmed with myself that web development isn’t my calling. Failure means to learn a lesson from lack of success and continue to move forward. I may not be following my dreams from sitting in a desk, but sitting in a desk temporarily enables me to have the means to reach my dreams. Dreams exist, and are real, reasonable, advanced thoughts of the desire for achievement which humans heavily crave. Then how the heck am I going to follow my dreams? For now, here I am, standing before you, putting myself out there, and telling you my stories of the craziness that is my life. The more I plug away at that and keep resilience in my heart pocket, I will in due time find the key to unlock my treasure chest and pay it forward in honor of all of those who helped me reach the top with a smile. That’s the true meaning of success!
