Academy Xi Reflection Exercise
I decided to study software engineering because it was time for a change.
One of my first jobs was in sales. From that experience, I knew I didn’t want to do sales. I then used my sales experience to get a job in communications. From that experience, I knew I didn’t want to do comms, so I used that experience to get myself a job in digital marketing. I’ve been working in digital marketing for the last year, and gosh. If I had to do that job for a few more years, I think I would become a withered shell of a man.
When it comes to my career, I sometimes feel I just got on board of the wrong train.
When I think back about the experiences I’ve found most fulfilling, I think of 2013–2018. In 2013, I tried building a game, just for the heck of it. I thought it would be a hobby I could use to distract myself from the studies I was doing at the time. It became waaaaaay more than that. I really started to enjoy the challenge of coding because it felt like solving puzzles all day. I also realized that I loved building things! Every experience has its challenges, but these were challenges that I really liked!
I tried to take a stab at becoming a game developer. It was a great experience, but it didn’t work out. One of the main reasons I didn’t continue down the software developer journey after that was because I only knew one coding language, and that language was too niche to be of value. Furthermore, I’d driven myself broke in the pursuit of my passion, so I didn’t have the resources to retrain or go back to school. I realized that I’d have to get back to the ‘real world’ and find a job in an industry which I had lots of experience in... hello again, sales, comms and marketing :(
Fast forward a few years, and I’m now in a position where I can afford to get retrained, and this time, I want to learn more coding languages so I become more versatile, and develop a broad skillset of value. This is the industry I’d like to work in, and I can finally get to pursue this path again. I haven’t been this excited for awhile!
Now…time to talk about this project.
One of my key learnings from this project is that ‘I am not alone’. I noticed that whenever I googled a coding problem I was facing, there would always be a ton of other people who have faced the same problem, and written about it! Software development seems like a great community to be a part of, because it seems whenever someone is facing a problem, there are always people with more experience willing to help them solve it.
The process I would follow for solving problems is:
- Take a stab at it
- If that fails, google it
- Take another stab at it
- If that fails, find a youtube video which will teach me more about the subject
- Take another stab at it
- If that fails, drink some tea
- Repeat
It may not be the best problem solving process, but it sure keeps me well hydrated!
I don’t have any ‘what could have been improved’ suggestions at the moment, but that is something I’ll keep reflecting on. It has been a great exercise to do, and I appreciate that I had to do it independently because it gave me a much clearer idea of what I do and do not know. I now have a whole bunch of questions I didn’t have before, and I’m sure I’ll be asking about them soon.
Thanks for the read!