My Unlearning Tech Journey
© ilhanx
My tech career started unexpectedly, so I thought I would share my journey. I hope this helps people see there is a corner of tech for you. No matter the background. You can do it and excel.
Before Covid
Pre-covid, I was more than excited to enter medical school and become a doctor - my lifelong goal. I envisioned that helping people as a doctor would make up for the lack of medical access I experienced as a refugee. What better way to spend your life than helping those in need, especially children?
My views on tech pre-covid and throughout college weren’t particularly positive. I can’t remember one girl that I know that was learning something related to tech and enjoyed it. It was mostly the boys that spoke about the classes favorably. I was too busy entrenched with how to enter medicine and do great on the MCAT to ever take Tech seriously.
During Covid
Upon graduating from college and having taken a gap year, covid arrived at a sensitive time for something dramatic to happen. There was an eerie feeling that wouldn't go away. I did my best to put it into words, but I cannot still fully articulate what changed mentally. Studying for the MCAT kept me occupied but my mind was daydreaming about the scary possibilities of life.
Being out in nature and hiking calmed me. What would happen if I became a writer along with being a doctor…Oh the places your mind will go when it knows the time is up but it’s still not sure which direction to go. So I made a silent decision to stop studying for 1 month. Just one month.
After(ish) Covid
That silent decision to take each day, beginning February 2021, as it comes changed my life. I like Twitter to this day because it was the place I first saw the word “cybersecurity.” Never before that did I think about the professionals that protect software.
It’s easy for me to say the rest fell into place, but it wasn’t easy applying to positions in cybersecurity and not hearing back at all. This is when apprenticeships came into my life. I knew after trial and error that the position I was applying for wasn’t necessarily the key, it was the connections and the people that I came into contact with.
I want every person reading this to know that there is a place in tech for you. Your journey will probably be different from mine, but that inklining to find ourselves, change our situations, and expand our roles is natural. You’ll make it all come to fruition. I believe that.
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