sarisizi

  Yeah, it's been 22 years living, 8 years coding. It was all fun at the beginning. I and friends were making cool flash animations--there was flash once, we even tried to make a shooter game with 3D graphics. Then I jumped into the world of coding. I was reading books, coding small things, eating popcorn while watching edX courses. I was constantly shifting my focus, different programming languages, different platforms, cool new technologies. Then I had to decide on a university. I thought: "Hey, I don't want to deal with introductory python courses, and stupid freshmen, I want to be the cool computer wiz without a degree!". And I choose an arts bachelor for fun and easy scholarship, I had good marks.

  I think this was my first mistake, I didn't know university was actually all about the environment, I found myself surrounded by people talking and interested in boring history, sociology, psychology stuff, and completely ignorant of computers. Actually, I made some friends, I even loved psychology and philosophy. But still, I was spending my time alone in the library coding and learning while my friends were preparing their fifth response paper on Metamorphoses. I felt alone. After a while university began to tease me because of my low grades. And it was psychologically disturbing. I tried to balance my academic life and computer passion but I failed. And I couldn't leave the school because I was in need of that scholarship they were giving me. 3 years passed with this unbalanced life.

  6 months ago I decided to leave the school and I moved to an easier no-scholarship state university. And I began thinking about my career as a software engineer. How am I going to find a job? I began scrolling down LinkedIn job postings and found out I should be able to do "one thing" well. I should've mastered Django, Rails, Android, etc. "Yeah, I can make that!" I said, they said, "No, you don't have a degree, the only thing you have is an ugly GitHub page with unfinished or empty repos, go away!". They were right in a way, all these years all I was doing was having fun, I wasn't prepared for a job. But now I didn't have money, a scholarship, or any plan to earn a living. Parents went ugly, they said I was a careless, stupid, ignorant boy. I know they are not right. But I didn't know what to do. Life seemed so boring, and meaningless. Wished I'd die. But then I pulled myself together and accepted the challenge. There is no dying, I'll work hard and I'll find a job, not just "a job", someplace where I can have fun working. I know the next 3-4 months won't be easy but I know I can do it.

See you there!