I want to take a beat to acknowledge my privilege. I had a roof over my head during quarantine 2020 and food in the fridge. I spent this time with my family and worked on myself and my skills as a developer. Though I faced many challenges and it has in no way been easy, I have had it easier than a lot of others and I am fortunate enough to be in a position to help others in this time.
So I graduated during a pandemic.
The day I had been working toward for five years came about under the strangest circumstances. After completing my exams online and submitting my capstone instead of presenting it, I was faced with months of uncertainty ahead.
I wanted to get my career going. There was no doubt about it, I wanted to get my hands dirty in developing but the job market had stalled and I had this fear of getting left behind.
I was too new to get a seasoned developer role and not new enough to land an internship or apprenticeship.
So I went hard on the job search. I hit the ground running and I kept running. I got a few interviews and I knocked them out of the park until I got to the final interview and didn't get the job.
But I kept going because I had been so close... and I burnt out soon after.
I didn't focus on my mental health. I didn't focus on my physical health. Burn out is common in normal circumstances, but in a pandemic there are even more risks. With every day feeling the same, but the months speeding by, I felt stagnant in the middle of it all. I couldn't remember the last time I spent the summer with myself; not working or travelling or in school.
It became mandatory for me to do check ins with myself to see where my mental health was at. I had to reaffirm every morning that the responses I got from companies and potential jobs was not a reflection of who I was as a person. I am so much more than my career aspirations. In fact, it is not even a reflection of my professional persona. Our world was in the beginning of a deadly pandemic and I needed to be easier on myself to make it through.
I had to rethink my plans. While I initially was on track to start work as soon as I graduated, I had to acknowledge that my timeline would be pushed. In the meantime, I would celebrate how far I had come.
So my sister and family threw me a graduation in our backyard. It was so important to me to take a beat and celebrate this huge step in my career. Isn't my family the BEST? Here's a picture of me taking time to thank every single one of them, and maybe getting a little teary eyed.
I took two weeks to myself. No interview prep, no LeetCode or even discussing 'my future.' I meditated, I worked on my art, I caught up on TV shows. Some days I would do nothing. I would just loft from one room to the other and it was glorious. I realized my favourite thing to do was find recipes of food I could no longer eat (because... pandemic) and make it at home.
When I got back to interview prep, I decided I would actively take the 'weekend' off. Int he pandemic every day felt like a weekend and also a workday. There was no distinction anymore and I was bringing it back. Take breaks. Take days off. Destress, even if you think I've been in my room all day, I am relaxing. If your desk is in your room, this is now a hybrid work/relax space and being at your desk is not relaxing.
For the next seven months, I went through waves of feeling good about my future and feeling completely hopeless. But in those moments of hopelessness, I leaned on my family, I leaned on my friends, and most importantly:
I reaffirmed myself. I built myself up. I talked to myself kindly. I went through my 'old' accomplishments, reminding myself Yeah! I did that! and I would one day have more opportunities. I became excited about that, I just had to keep going. It became important for me to write down what was going through my head on my good days and my bad days. This helped ground me. Rereading journal entries gave me perspective. I would forget small accomplishments a week after completing them. I solved an NP Hard problem for a take home test from a company in Vancouver. In the moment, I was devastated when they did not want to move forward with my application but... I solved an NP Hard problem!!!! I used Google's OR-Tools to solve a travelling salesperson problem and I started writing these things down.
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