Victor Abraham
I’ve always found that whatever I am passionate about I will dive right into, but I wasn’t always what sure what career I would be passionate about. So when I left college, I jumped on many seemingly unrelated opportunities; I spent a year as a political campaign manager, a summer working as a new station intern, even moved halfway across the country and managed a budding tech repair business. It was in this last role that I realized maybe my natural draw to tech was meant to be more than a hobby but I was working there in the wrong capacity.
From then on, I looked for avenues to get into the IT industry; I worked for and earned numerous certifications and found myself getting better and better offers. But I still ultimately felt like my job was more reactive than proactive; I was maintaining and working on systems that others had put in place or created. My final stop in the IT world was at a large investment company and I found myself working alongside developers who were creating much of our in house software. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t immensely envious of the type of work they did on a daily basis.
Having visited Turing a couple of years prior, but ultimately feeling like it was out of reach, I revisited the school as an option. I spoke to two friends I had made during those two years who were graduates and one said something that really sparked something in me: “There will never be a good time to quit everything you’re doing in life and go back to school for seven months. But it’s way more likely you regret not doing it than doing it.” Those words rattled around in my head for a few days and at the end of the week, I decided it was the truest thing I had ever heard and applied. I got in and immediately decided this was the path I wanted to take. No more searching for a calling; this was something I had wanted to do and now it was a material, attainable goal.
So far, I have learned so much about myself and what I am capable of. I want to continue my learning path and leave capable developer, ready to be an asset to whomever I work for.
idea snippets: "Before I was a developer, I used to go into holes of finding a subject that interested me and watching youtube videos and reading wikipedia pages all night. Now that I am a dev, music artists and weird historical events have been replaced by learning about new technologies. I try to shy away from stretching myself too thin. But learning a little bit about a lot of things helps me to gain context not only for the tech that I work on, but also things adjacent to my field."
Hey Victor, this is a great draft! I appreciate seeing your narrative arc so clearly with how moving into technology and then having that desire to create the technology led you to programming. I also love that you've emphasized how you assess risk to make smart decisions. For future iterations, I would recommend pulling in some more specifics for the end of your story; you mention learning so much and becoming a capable developer, what have you learned? How are you demonstrating being a capable developer? Adding in those specifics will make this a little stronger in closing up that arc and showing how this is definitely the career for you. Nice work!