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ultima_trev
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Re: What have you done with your life?

Mon Jan 16, 2012 1:57 pm

Can't say I've done much with my life. Got a GED in 2001, went on to college and got a Bachelor of Computer Science in 2006. In 2007, started working as a sys admin at a Fortune 500 company and still work there to this day.

When I'm not working on comp tech, be it occupationally or leisurely, I drown myself in the evil symphony of Norwegian Black Metal while forging my plan for world domination. And when not doing that, just looking up videos or images of hot Asian chicks.

I have always strove to be a massive underachiever. 8)
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Sunburn74
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Re: What have you done with your life?

Mon Jan 16, 2012 2:26 pm

My story:
Went to highschool. Did pretty well but not valedictorian by any stretch.
Went to college and studied biochem. Didn't really know what I wanted to do. Was distracted by tons of stuff and for at least half of college was a totally average student. Thought about med school vs grad school vs getting a job. Had a medical disaster in the family. Really pushed me towards med school.
Applied to med school whilst working odd jobs (library assistant, lots of lab tech jobs, etc). Got in. Did well. Applying for residency as we speak. Have shots at training at Johns Hopkins and Yale as well as other awesome programs. Was the best decision I ever made (and oddly enough was easier to get through than college due to there being less distractions and the work being always real, immediately useful, and immediately applicable unlike say my physical chem course in college where we're calculating probabilities of finding electrons in a given space and etc).

Anyway if you're sitting about, not sure what you want to do with your life, and had decent enough grades in college >3.0, think a little about med school.
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Jakubgt
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Re: What have you done with your life?

Thu Jan 19, 2012 10:10 pm

You guys have some great stories
Last edited by Jakubgt on Fri Jul 08, 2016 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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EsotericLord
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Re: What have you done with your life?

Fri Jan 20, 2012 1:20 am

At 23, I'm probably one of the youngest members to frequent this forum, and I am still early in my IT career, but pretty proud of where I am in life.

I attended a local community college taking the basic IT course load. To finish up my Associates, I started an internship, that paid something like $8.32 an hour, 20 hours a week. The people I worked for liked me well enough that that turned into a part time job: $12 an hour for 30 hours a week.

I worked that job for over 2 years. I took a few misc. IT classes related to network security, enough to educate myself a little bit, but I struggle with networking, so I don't think its the right field for me. I got my A+ cert. After a few failed interviews, I finally landed a full time job at my community college, maintaining the computer labs at one of the campuses. I make about $33k a year, with solid benefits and a pension plan, as well as a retirement savings plan that i am starting to contribute to. As an added bonus, I now am an adjunct teacher, teaching one of the A+ classes my college offers, which brings in a little extra money on the side.

I'm actually only on my 2nd week at this new job, but so far its pretty promising. I'm glad I got an IT job without having to sell my soul to a corporation. The college is a state program, so the job is really stable, which I was psyched to get in this crazy economy. I plan on starting back on my Bachelor's in about a year.
 
clone
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Re: What have you done with your life?

Fri Jan 20, 2012 3:40 am

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Last edited by clone on Tue Jan 14, 2014 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Arclight
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Re: What have you done with your life?

Fri Jan 20, 2012 4:25 am

What have you done with your life?

Not much, i finished school, high school and college. Worked in 3 different companies doing very diverse jobs but mostly in an office environment. I feel stuck, i'm in that "idk what to do" phase. I def. like computers but not for serious application, i would def. get bored to learn stuff that would actually be useful for a job in this domain.

If anyone out there is in a computer related field, and can give me any insight on how you got there?

Like i said I like computers but not for serious application. Still i would also like to hear how did some people made it in this market.

I can't answer the rest of the questions since i'm not in the position to do so. I kinda feel what you feel, wish i could do something about it. My problem is that i don't feel any kind of drive to achieve a goal. Matter of fact i never got around setting a personal goal since i got no idea what i would like to do.
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AMD Damo
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Re: What have you done with your life?

Thu Jan 26, 2012 1:37 am

AMD Damo wrote:
Well my life "starts" at the end of this year when I graduate from high school, but I've been half-arsing my way through high school and most likely won't go to University to do IT like I had planned a few years ago. I've had a job since 2006 doing the continuous replay for the Flemington Race Course. Might be trying to chase up a career in Auto after I finish school, who knows. I'm just floating along at the moment.


Well, its been three years since I graduated from high school, I gave up on the idea of getting a job in the IT industry after looking at the way the industry is here in Australia, it seems every man and his dog has a bachelor degree in some form of IT, so employers have a massive pool of people needing jobs to choose from, which means if you ain't the best of the best, no chance of getting a job. So I bludged my way through the final year and got a crappy ENTER score. I managed to get into Cert IV in Networking at a TAFE institute but I declined.

So I started looking at getting an apprenticeship, I applied over http://www.seek.com.au and went to business handing out my resume everywhere, my first interview I scored was at a Diesel workshop in a Melbourne suburb called Thomastown, I went for the interview and basically the business owner, some old guy in his 60s asked me if I had any previous experience on the tools, I said no, then he just moaned about angry customers and that i'll end up with dermotitis and to call him back when I got my drivers license (I never called back).

I had no luck applying online and no one had contacted me back with my resumes, so I applied to do a pre-apprenticeship course in light vehicles (motor mechanic), basically it lets you complete the first year of an apprenticeship so you already know all the basics. I sat this test with a few other kids, which was a few basic maths questions and I passed very easily, they said they would contact me in about a month if I got in or not.

A few days later I went to "Autocentro" at Essendon Fields, which is a recent development of multiple car dealerships all in one main street, there was about 8 different dealerships there at the time, right away I went into Ford hoping I could get my apprenticeship there, I spoke to the service manager and they said they had no jobs going and would contact me in the future, never happened to this day, eventually I worked my way around to Toyota, where the service manager gave me the details of someone high up in the VACC (Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce.) which is a big automotive group involved in the industry, I thanked him and went on to the last two dealerships, Mazda and Honda, handed in my resumes and they all gave the same story about no jobs, we'll contact you when they come up.

I called up the guy at the VACC and he wanted to see me for an interview and to submit my resume on their site, I agreed and he set a date, I had to go to their office in St Kilda right in Melbourne, pain in the ass but I said i'd come. I got called up by the TAFE a day before the interview and said I passed and I got into the pre-apprenticeship and that they wanted to enrol me on the same date as the interview with the guy at the VACC. I said could we do it some time else but no the enrolement date was then, if i didn't go I didn't get into the course. I immediately rang up the VACC and spoke to the guy again, and he cracked it bad and basically bullied me into coming into the interview and to forget the course because it won't get me a job anyway.

I hadn't yet submitted my resume through their site so I tried to do that, but that part of their website was down with some sort of error, and I couldn't submit it, and it really annoyed me, especially after dealing wih the other guy. I rang him up again and he said just bring it in the interview.

The day of the interview I was still fairly annoyed, and after waiting around eventually he came and got me to talk to me, the first thing he said to me was "So, what do you know about our organisation, the VACC?" and I replied with:

"WELL I KNOW THAT YOUR F-ING WEBSITE DOESN'T WORK!"

Bad move, it turned into a yelling match, and he said they'd contact me back in a few weeks to tell me if they'd give me an apprenticeship (lol yeah right).

The day after, Honda contacted me and they said they wanted to interview me for an apprenticeship as a motor mechanic, awesome. We organised a time and a date.

When the interview came, I made sure I dressed up in smart casual clothes, no jeans, styled hair, nice shoes and ironed shirt and dress pants, the interview was just normal questions about why I was interested in the job and since I have a year 12 pass why didn't I go to University (apprenticeships are usually taken up by high-school dropouts) and I gave my reasoning, they said they'd call me back when they interviewed the others.

A week later they called me back and they said they wanted me to come in for another interview, where they told me that I got the job, because I dressed a lot nicer and looked neater than the others and the others where overqualified for the job, they had a diploma in something else.

That was my worst mistake, taking up that job offer, the first two weeks where great, then another mechanic came back from holidays who started starting arguments and fights with me, at first I thought he was joking, so I started giving it back to him jokingly and he told the service manager about it, and I got in trouble. Then he'd always see what I'm up to and try start arguments with me around the workshop, trying to promot a reaction from me so he could go tell the service manager who would side with him because he had been with the company for over 10 years. It got to a stage where we both nearly punched the crap out of each other and after 6 months of copping **** from him I decided that it was enough and I'm looking for another job, I told a few friends and one had a brother in a high up position and they where looking for apprentices, as auto electricians though, which I wasn't too keen on but looking at the situation I was in, I took the job.

Nearly 2 years later, I haven't learnt anything about auto electrics and I basically get used for cheap labour to wash cars, unload 40 foot containers, and organise everything, because I'm an apprentice, they can pay me below minumum wage (which is about $15 an hour here in Australia) as of the last 2 weeks they put me in managing the store because our storeman left. I'm oging to finish my apprenticeship as I've only got 2 years to go, get my qualifications as an auto electrician (who funnily enough knows nothing about auto electrical) and then leave, I want to do continue and finish off my other apprenticeship as a light vehicle motor mechanic, or move on and try get into the mines as a driver/logistics type position while the resources boom is still happening and they're offering stupidly high wages for all positions ($115K plus 15% super for a freakin truck driver).

So basically, the last 3 years I've spent going around in circles, people at work say I'm too smart to be here stuck in this crappy industry, and they know I have a good IT background through school and a highschool pass but I have no motivation or interest in IT anymore really, I just build the ocasional computer thats it, I can't bring myself to study my ass off like I used to during high school up until the last year.
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ludi
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Re: What have you done with your life?

Thu Jan 26, 2012 2:18 pm

I got through high school thinking I might want to do something in architectural engineering, but when I looked at my scholarship options, the state's narrow-focus engineering school was offering better money and a smaller-town environment than BigState U, which offered architectural options. I had picked up a lot of electronics skill from my dad, and got deeply into computers in college, so I figured I would probably end up in the R&D section of some tech company.

Nope. Graduated into the early '00s tech recession. For a couple years, just about all you could get at the semi-annual Career Fairs was a dirty look and a calm reassurance that your resume would be shredded as soon as possible. So, there was a 3.5-year string of failed interviews and a lot of temp/contract jobs that ranged from website maintenance at a car dealership to running test scripts on medical devices.

Then, I got hired in power systems engineering, something I actually had studied at my engineering school (one of only a dozen or so schools in the entire country that was maintaining a fully-staffed power department at the time), but never expected to pursue. Go figure.

As it happens I actually enjoy my job most days, and compensate for the rest of my interests by maintaining a lot of random hobbies.
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