My name is Alexander, I'm 25 years old. Today I want to share my story and path to IT, somewhere to joke, somewhere to be serious, to give food for thought. My story will be very interesting, brew some tea, open a beer. Together with you, I will remember my past, establish cause-and-effect relationships and try to look into the future. So, let's get started.
Chapter I. Death of dreams, birth of uncertainty.
It just so happens that I have been skateboarding since I was 11 years old. I always didn’t care about studying: at school I was a C student and never took my school time as something serious. I had one dream, and it sounded like this: “ Become a sponsored rider .” I spent all my free time skateboarding and dreamed of achieving certain goals. Despite this, according to my father’s instructions, during the last year at school, I went to a bunch of specialized classes in order to enroll and pass the exam normally, while learning English along the way. So what would you think? I did it. It was a breakthrough. Sevastopol National University of Nuclear Energy and Industry, budget, specialty AUTP (Automatic Process Control) The first faculty is the most difficult, as it turned out. Sevastopol, the sea, girls, eternal (almost) summer, respect from my parents for entering the budget - I was pleased with myself. Beautiful view from Cape Fiolent, appreciate the beauty:
I started skating actively, striving to get sponsored by NAS skateshop, the monopoly skateshop in Crimea in 2011, and fulfill my childhood dream. And I got it. The dream came true. At first I was happy, I competed, acted in videos, and skated.
But after some time, I realized that there were few conditions for progress: all the money was spent on boards and shoes, the level and severity of injuries was growing. A decision was made to stop perceiving this as a goal in life, to remove it from its primary role. No sooner said than done: I started skating less, finished the third year, transferred to correspondence courses, and went to my hometown of Slavutich.
Chapter II. Call
I have always been a skinny guy - I weighed 55-60 kg at most. And what would you think I decided to do? That's right - become a fitness instructor. With my ectomorph build, it was real torture. I started eating healthy (6 times a day), ate tons of sports nutrition and started regularly going to the gym, reading literature and immersing myself in these things. A year later I became like this:
Through friends I agreed to work in the network of Ukrainian fitness clubs SportLife, but, alas. I received a serious injury to my shoulder joint (I didn’t warm up). Diagnosis: a year (minimum) without activity in any form. To put it mildly, I was broken, I wanted to connect my life with this industry, I had already got a job: in a week I was supposed to have my first day as a fitness trainer. Next - hard drinking, renunciation, anger, humility.
Chapter III. The wind of change. Immigration
One day a thought came to me - I need change, a change of environment, new people, new opportunities. I had a dream about how I was riding a bicycle through some beautiful city (as it turned out, it was prophetic).
The decision was made to move to Poland: I chose the capital, I wanted opportunities. I collected all my savings, took a one-way ticket and set off on an adventure. I think this was the most important and fateful decision in my life. I gave the taxi driver a piece of paper with the hotel address, arrived, and quickly settled in. It was May, the weather was beautiful, I took a shower and immediately went outside. My goal was to meet as many people as I could, to have adventures. And I found adventure. I met my girlfriend, with whom we are still together (Sophia, hello). It was an explosion of feelings: for the first time I met a person for whom I was so passionate. We spent all our time together, walked, talked, burned with passion, it was wonderful.
Then I ran out of money. It was necessary to urgently do something so as not to lose this whole fairy tale. I got a job as a courier at Dominos Pizza in the center, rented a room there, and was almost hit by a bus on my first day of work :) I worked as a courier for 11 months. During this time, I learned to work in a team, began to hate pizza, got into an accident 5 times, paid fines to the cops for violating traffic rules, died mentally and physically, drove summer tires in the snow in winter, fought with a taxi driver, and much more. Statistics from my job at the time of dismissal:
After this moment, I decided to actually quit (I just parked the scooter and saw this :D):
No sooner said than done. I am unemployed.
Chapter IV. Working in a taxi
Yes, I have dedicated a separate chapter for this. A former colleague invited me to work for Uber at his company - I agreed. At first I worked for a 50/50 company for a couple of months, and crashed cars a couple of times. This company cheated me a little out of money in the end, but still. Then I rented a car, began to be responsible for myself, rented a two-room apartment with my girlfriend and her friend, with a balcony and a huge bed for the whole room, a personal parking space and a good housing cooperative in the center area, my income grew. From that moment on, I began to learn that everything I earn is mine, everything depends only on me. I took full responsibility for my life, became more serious, improved my English and Polish skills with clients, got out of many situations, hit a nationalist in the face, found a bunch of phones and personal belongings of clients (I returned them to good ones, not to assholes), got to know the whole city perfectly, acquired connections and new friends, worked 15 hours a day.
But at some point I realized that I got everything I could from this job. Work began to burden and ceased to please. I had to use stimulants to somehow do the routine over and over again. I realized that I am nobody and I have nothing. There is no confidence in the future, there are many risks, many hours of work per day. I seem to have a car and an apartment, but they are not mine, I have everything, but I truly don’t own it all. I started asking myself, “ Who do I want to be, what do I want to do, who do I see myself in the future ” EVERY day. I carried passengers and thought about it day after day, looking for an answer, something really worthwhile. And one day, something from above showed me the way, as if I had gained true knowledge of what would happen next and how to achieve it. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened.
Chapter V. Conclusions, path, enthusiasm!
I understood, I realized what life taught me and what lessons it taught me... Skateboarding - try again, don’t be afraid of failure, lose fear, look for opportunities. Working as a courier - develop soft skills, smooth out corners, stop beating yourself up. Taxi driver - get to know people, learn to communicate, look inside yourself, learn to work and be responsible for your words and deeds. Love - be tolerant, learn flexibility and loyalty, become kinder and wiser. And all this... For the sake of PROGRAMMING!!! :) I finally realized that the only thing I need to be happy is a specialty where I can realize all my skills, abilities, make efforts, something truly rewarding. As soon as I realized this, I immediately realized that this is the world of IT, and that I really want and am wildly interested in doing this. I began to rustle the vast expanses of the vastness, what language to learn first and all that, I chose Java, I think I was attracted by the idea of OOP and cross-platform, and also in an interview with one person from Tesla (I really like Elon’s ideas) - he recommended Java as the first language, and so on. ..let's fly!
I thought for a long time about what angle to approach it from. I looked through a bunch of forums and noticed that if you learn Java, it’s better to start with javarush.ru. And they are fucking right. Yesterday I accidentally met an old friend with whom I studied in elementary school, it turned out that he had been in IT for 3 years, I drank beer in his office, tomorrow I have an interview for an internship at a more or less serious company, be happy for me :) Also ! I would like to sincerely thank those who work with Javarash: this is an excellent resource for learning programming, everything is presented in such a pleasant way that if Java Rush were a pie, and I was a fat uiebkom, I would eat non-stop until I die huiam . I SINCERELY THANK THE JAVARUSH TEAM: YOU DID NOT Scare Me Away with the WEIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE, BUT ALLOWED YOU TO FALL IN LOVE WITH THEM AND THIS LANGUAGE WITH THE HELP OF A GORGEOUS APPROACH, THANK YOU GUYS FROM MY SOUL!!! Your resource is a community, and jokes, and help, and coding, and all together, honestly - I sympathize with those people who start learning programming not from Java or Java Rush - POOR PEOPLE! :) @dascorvin - my inst, if anyone likes me as a person and you are interested in what will happen next - welcome guys, subscribe, I will reciprocate :)