“I’ve reached the boiling point with the situation”.
this is an idiom we all use from time to time to express our feelings in an uncontrollable state mostly accompanied by anxiety.
But what I’ve been experiencing during last 2 days has been something much more than that. to give it a name, I thought it might be a good idea to refer to my lost and forgotten days (years) of studying chemical engineering. while to many people the boiling point seems to be the hottest state a substance may experience, it is explained in every thermodynamics reference that the critical point is what they should be looking for. it is a state achieved by controlling both pressure and temperature, in which the substance can’t be identified as either solid, liquid or gas anymore. in other words, it costs its characteristics.
so, “at my critical point” has been my status for the last two days. I’ve been overwhelmingly reviewing my educational and personal development path from the day I graduated from the high school. to be honest, not only the results are not in my favor at the end of the day, but I also feel that nowhere in this long journey have I felt satisfied even for a short time.
everything is rooted back to the time I was about twelve years old and my father bought us a PC. I was super amazed by this new phenomenon. but surprisingly not because of the new gaming experience but due to the novelty of the whole thing and the potential it had to become anything I could ever want. seeing my passion, my mom registered me for a professional course which I couldn’t recognize it’s real value at the time. but later realized it was the MCSE Professional Certification Course by Microsoft! anyway, by the time I got eighteen, my curiosity had resulted in good enough foundations and familiarities with the digital world to make computer engineering a priority for my undergrad studies. but at this point comes the turning point of my life. My parent’s are getting divorced. My role in the family is changing from the one who needs support and energy at the very first steps of real life experiments to a judge that has to find a solution for problems much bigger than his mental abilities. so, my priority changes from following my passion to just finding back my peace of mind and focus .
“I’ll put the needle of the compass on the house and find the farthest place from home to live” I told my mom and edited the list of my university/ major priorities to do so.
three months later, I was a student of a major in which I had no idea about in a city near the south-east border of the country that did’t even have a proper water to drink. I wasn’t courageous enough nor did I have a truthful friend or a mentor to tell me about the option of quitting. so, I stuck to the plan and day after day the snowball effect increasingly diverged my ideal living/ learning path form the one I was in.
eventually I got a second chance. I thought maybe change of major in my masters’ my help the situation a bit and due to the experiences and achievements during the the bachelor study years, MBA was my choice. again at this point, having someone to give me energy and hope to follow my passion, I could serve my interests by choosing a computer related field. but this didn’t happen and I sited still, watching my dreams getting lost and farther again for the second time.
now, I’m twenty years old and at the end of my MBA journey. my interest and passion for computers and programming is stronger than anytime. but I’m not sure if this is a right choice to give the roll to my heart in my last chance. the price could I pay for this is to go for a two-year compulsory military service to be permitted to enter the job market officially plus accepting that a decade of my life -supposedly the best decade- is wasted and gone and I have to be relaxed dealing with this fact!
feeling extremely overwhelmed this morning, I googled “software developer vs financial analyst”. the first result was an outstanding article by an Iranian in the medium blog of FreeCodeCamp.org . Hardly ever comes a time when you search for some idea buried in a long string and you get a specific answer for that. but this was one those times.
as Amir explains, he has been through almost the same dilemma for a while. In a fair comparison we can even say he must have experienced an even harder situation since his financial studies are much greater than mine. But he has handled the situation perfectly in my opinion and followed his passion for programming before it gets too late. I highly recommend everybody to read the entire article. while it’s a story of a finance student turning into a programmer, so many people with different majors may resonate with the whole idea and the aspects discussed regarding the programming field.
Amir Ghafouri’s contact info:
Amir’s Article on medium: Click Here
I put this post on my blog firstly to promote Amir’s amazing content and secondly to use it as a self reminder of my mistakes and a catalyzer for next -hopefully better- steps.
let me know your opinion on my story or even a related story of your own in comments.