The Spark
09 Sep 2024
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards - Steve Jobs
We all questioned why things happened to us. Whether it was good or bad. Whether you didn’t get the opportunity you wanted. You may not be doing something inline with what you initially set yourself for. When we were younger, we named dream careers that may have sounded typical, far reach, or to some achievable. Everyone says you usually don’t get the job that you wanted as a kid. Very few do achieve those dreams. Some are working jobs they didn’t wish for as a kid.
Problem Solving kid
Growing up, I always wanted to be some type of engineer dealing with machines or construction. I was always building and creating things. With the spark of legos, I always thought I’d be designing houses or cars. I’d take apart toys and rebuild them. One show in particular that sparked my interest in engineering was curious george. The silly projects he would do, I would also try to replicate. I joined the robotics team in middle school and high school because I loved the hands on building experience to solve a given task with robots. These experiences made me think that “Engineering” was for me.
Connecting the dots
Looking back, I wasn’t actually meant to be an engineer working with mechanics or construction. There were some engineering aspects and challenges I dealt with in school that made me realize that I wasn’t cut out for it. It wasn’t a weak mentality but rather a feeling of truly knowing my passion. I looked back and realized that I was more passionate about computers. When I was 5 years old, I would sneak out to play on my mom’s 2007 DELL laptop. There were always issues with it because of how low end and slow it was. Whenever issues arised, I was always trying to find solutions to those errors. Fast forward to middle school, I would play games like roblox and try learning how to make my own game. I even injected dll’s to hack certain games. One of the first programming languages I tried out was Lua C when I tried to make a moving car in roblox and it sparked my interests in coding. Throughout high-school I was in the engineering academy but I was never decent with hands on projects. The projects I was only having fun with were coding projects. When I started as a software developer intern at SERVCO, I started having seconds thoughts about the career. There were skills I didn’t attain. There were skills that made me feel angry towards myself since I didn’t have it or didn’t learn. With the first given tasks of the internship, I thought that I felt like an imposter and that I was close to quitting. What kept me going is knowing that I just had to trust the process. I had to trust the process and worry about the outcome later. It didn’t matter if it was computer science was for me or not at the time, what mattered most was going through the challenges to gain experience that would shape my future. I was too focused on the later rather than the present. Eventually it all worked out.
Why Software Engineering?
I figured out my strengths in high school. It wasn’t the physics bridge challenges or egg drop challenges that sparked my interest, but the coding projects like the chatbot I made and the javascript and python problems. Looking back, I was always inclined to working with technology more than building with my hands. Looking back after finishing the internship, I can now see why I was given such challenges to see if I’m meant for computer science. Just like what Steve Jobs said, I was only able to connect the dots and realize until after I am where I am today.