How to be IT
In the last few months I’ve been making a few more professional decisions. I’m nowhere near done university yet I’ve been so anxious to learn everything I possibly can about my chosen field of Computer Science that I have less than a year left in my major yet I’m still close to two years away from graduating.
I’ve realized that it’s time for me to pick a specialty. I started this degree because I have had a genuine interest in programming ever since I got my hands on an old APCO Turbo and the book “101 BASIC Games” courtesy of my dad (who in his defence had no idea what he picked up at a library sale for fifty cents would keep me locked in the basement teaching myself to program for almost 3 years instead of going outside and mowing the lawn). Over the last few years, however, I’ve discovered that while I still enjoy programming, there are quite a few things which I find more interesting.
I’ve developed quite an interest in the field of networking and security. The feeling of magic is the same one I had all those years ago when I first layed hands on that old APCO Turbo and discovered that by changing what was in the PRINT statements I could make the computer talk to me, but there’s more to the story than that…
I’ve discovered that finding my passion wasn’t as straight forward as I would have liked to believe it would be. When I started university I was under the impression that I would go to school for four years, get my degree, and get a job making video games. After my first year I realized that maybe game making wasn’t my thing and that maybe I’d be an application writer. By the end of my second year I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to do that. I enjoyed writing programs that could read and write from databases and do all sorts of fancy things with the data and in fact my first internship involved mostly that mixed in with a bit of support work. As enjoyable as I found the work I brushed it off at the time as a distraction from what I wanted to be doing. I was still convinced that I wanted to be a programmer even though I didn’t particularly enjoy it. It was supposed to be a job, right? Why should I enjoy it?
It was at this point that I decided to take some time off. I was halfway through my degree and I was already burnt out. I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing but I still wanted to be doing it. I knew that there was something I was missing but what was it? What’s changed since those good old days in the basement trying to make my own version of PacMan? What’s different now from when I recreated the first Final Fantasy game for my Computer Science class back in high school?
I thought maybe it was that I didn’t have control over what I was doing, so I tried starting a few of my own projects, but I lost interest in them. Maybe I needed to work on something a bit more ambitious so I tried a few SourceForge projects but once again I lost interest. My year off was coming to a close and I still wasn’t sure I was making the right decisions, but I had one more big one to make and soon. Would I be going back to school in the fall? It was a tough choice, diving back in to something that was putting me financially behind when I still wasn’t even sure if it would be something I could picture myself doing for a carreer, but I did it. I went back to school and I put my heart in to my studies.
I’m still not entirely sure what happened during that year off, but that spark is back. I’ve found my stride and I’m at the point now where I’ll pick up the book and read ahead not just to save time in the future but because I’m genuinely interested in what I’m learning. I’m making a point of discovering and learning and generally absorbing all the information I can about the things that interest me. I’ve started picking up books that aren’t even part of my class, I’ve started cruising IT blogs and actively seeking out connections, mentors, and role models.
It’s been a great year and I’m looking forward to some self directed learning over the summer in anticipation of some more advanced classes in the fall. I’m still trying to find an internship or some other job to get myself fully immersed and start applying some of this knowledge hands on, but that will never stop the learning. The spark is there now, and the kindling is all set. I’m just waiting for a slight breeze to blow me in the right direction and I can take off like a wildfire.
~Find your passion for learning