I’ve done a lot of growing as a person moving from my high school life starting in 2009 to where I am today. Sometimes, I look back to just a few years ago and reflect on just how my thought process and priorities have shifted and I find it very interesting how I might have never thought I’d be like this when I was still in high school.
While I am still definitely the same person as I was years ago, I attribute a lot of my current success to the gradual but very big change in my thinking and my attitude. My day to day has certainly changed quite a lot from then and in many ways definitely for the better. I’ve definitely learned to curb my ego since then as well.
My Thinking and Day to Day In High School
I start with my high school life because my mindset and day to day here prefaced how it changed over time. This section is a little long so bear with me! In high school, I was one of those students, the kind that slept in every single class and still got straight A’s without ever studying a single book. I always found the classes to be very easy, but I also know that I never pushed myself, often opting to take regular classes instead of AP (Advanced Placement) classes. Even in my worst subject, English/Literature, I still managed to scrape by without even ever opening the book by just quickly glancing over the Sparknotes.
Well if I never studied, what in the world did I do with my time? I played video games. A lot. This obsession with video games, particularly with Call of Duty and League of Legends would help influence my decision to become a software developer.
While I was a sophomore (2010), I had actually taken a basic intro to computer science class and learned Java. It wasn’t anything particularly fancy, just the basic concept of classes, variable types, and collections. The classwork was often done in 10–15 minutes and the class would then be able to do as they pleased on the computers for the rest of the class time. I always opted to play Minecraft to pass the time for the next class.
This theme of taking computer classes continued on into my junior year where I took a basic video games and animations class. This was nothing particularly interesting admittedly and I don’t actually remember anything useful from that course. Even the coding segment was a pretty basic drag and drop logic. Nevertheless, being glued to the computer at home, this didn’t stop my curiosity.
That leads to my senior year, where I made the rank of “Captain” in my fourth year of JROTC. I was given the choice to lead the class as a Company Commander or join the Battalion Staff as the S-6 (Which would essentially be something of an IT role in the JROTC program at my school). Not being particularly attracted to the idea of being a Company Commander, I went with the obvious choice of becoming the Battalion S-6. While in this role that I was tasked to update the information and pictures on the school website for our program. This was my first taste of HTML as the librarian taught me how to update the webpage in Adobe Dreamweaver.
Upon graduating with a 3.8 GPA, my thoughts were to major in Computer Science as that would probably be the easiest way to live out life while still being quite attached to a computer. With that in mind, I left to pursue an education.
My Thinking and Day to Day in University
When I started University, all of my terrible study mannerisms (or rather the lack thereof) spilled over into my freshman year. This proceeded to bite me pretty hard as I started to actually do pretty bad on some subjects. I still did well on my Computer Science and Math classes as they were my strengths, but I was definitely struggling in other subjects. I even fell as far as to fail Literature II.
This led me to succumb to depression and lock myself even further into video games and online life. I barely left my dorm room, only leaving to maybe go to class and get food. Other than that, if I was awake, I was playing video games, but this time it felt very empty, unlike in high school, as if I was chasing something I didn’t know, and to this day I still don’t really know what was happening. To this day, I still meditate and reflect on that part of my life to make sure I never go through something like that again.
I lost a scholarship and almost lost financial aid in general because my GPA had dropped to 1.8. My freshman year was definitely a massive wake up call that this could not go on. I came back to start my sophomore year and started to little by little change my daily habits. This was the beginning of the end of the past me.
I started to at least study for my weaker subjects to patch up my grades. I also re-took Literature II and passed it with flying colors. On top of this, I started to leave the room a little bit more. I eventually found a club that I was interested in and started to make some friends there. I also went on to get an internship at my local county office as a Technology Intern, fixing printers and computers. I still played quite a bit of video games, but it was definitely not as excessive and empty as my freshman year.
Despite the wake up call, I still wasn’t very concerned about my future or being marketable in any way. I still believed that I had a lot of time to work on that kind of thing. This would lead me to my second wake up call.
Almost like a midlife crisis, when I started my junior year of university, I suddenly felt as if the next phase of my life is coming and I’d need to really be marketable soon. This hit me even harder as soon as my internship ended after a year. The good news though is that my studying habits have been getting better and better over time, to the point that I actually have confidence in them.
The mini midlife crisis made me dive a little deeper into programming, sacrificing some video game time to learn more concepts. It was at this time that I started to take on projects that I would find to be interesting, like creating my own Discord bots. I also began to work with some friends of mine who have graduated from University to make some websites for the local community. Programming outside of class and homework started to really feel like I was investing in myself.
This continued well into my senior year and past graduation until I got my first job out of college.
My Thinking and Day to Day at my First Job out of University
Despite having majored in Computer Science, I still felt as if I was missing something that really made me marketable to employers. The problem was as the saying goes, “I don’t know what I don’t know.” That’s when I suddenly received a call from a code boot camp that offered to pay me while I attended their program, offered a way for me to travel around the country via contract employment after the boot camp, get my foot into the door so I have real industry experience, and most importantly, teach me the skills that I felt I was missing in University. To a 21 year old me, this sounded like a great way to leave my parents’ house and get started with my adult life.
The time I spent at the boot camp was rough as they revealed to me just how little the University had taught me about actually being a developer in the tech industry. I knew the basic concepts of learning languages such as classes, data collections, and syntax, but not how to put them into practice to make full stack web applications. For this time, I lived, breathed, and ate code for 12 weeks as they crammed concept after concept at me, ranging from advanced Java, Unit Testing, Web APIs, Resume Optimization, and Interview Skills.
Of course, I still played the occasional video game here and there but there were truly nights where I had felt I could not afford to. That helped break the insane dependence I had on video games to escape from reality that I developed in my earlier school days.
My Thinking and Day to Day In My Early Career
After that grueling code boot camp, I moved to my one and only contract with that company. I had suddenly felt like I had a lot more room to breathe. The real world isn’t as scary as I had perceived back in my University days. Even so, I did not play nearly as many games. That code boot camp really shattered my reliance on video games.
On top of this, I started to seek out some tech meetups so I could meet the community around me and hopefully make some like-minded friends. This definitely would not have been an option I would have ever considered had I never changed from University.
My Thinking And Day to Day Now
While I still enjoy League of Legends on occasion, I feel as if I have my priorities in line now. I spend a lot more time dedicated to the development of my career, whether that’s diving into different side hustles or just developing cool stuff, like class libraries for NPM and NuGet, more advanced Discord bots, and many websites made with technologies like React and NodeJS. I’m also trying a lot of different side hustles. I definitely feel like I’ve grown significantly as a person, from my initial interest in Computer Science, to now. Writing this article was certainly a big way to reflect on that.
Afterthoughts
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