How did it all start?

Maybe it all goes back to when I was in sixth form at IES Viera y Clavijo, where I took the social sciences track, because in my head I was going to study business administration or economics at university. Economics was a subject I loved all through sixth form, and together with maths (I had a phase where I didn’t lift a finger for maths, but that’s a topic for another post) it was my favourite.

So my student brain said: I like maths and economics, what do I want for the future? Something related, right? And that’s how it went. After researching the two degrees I had in mind, I chose economics, and after the university entrance exams the good news arrived: I was accepted.

Inside the degree.

Once I started the degree I was as excited as could be (a bit strange because of the pandemic, online classes and so on). That excitement slowly faded as I saw how the university system worked: the incredible pressure of having to keep up (largely because of my student grant), but above all how old and outdated the syllabus and the methods were, and the incredibly inflated egos of some lecturers. We even had a subject where we reviewed “current” news, and new news was the last thing we looked at.

It may sound like I’m trashing university a lot. The truth is I have a lot of respect for people who go to university. I know it isn’t an easy road; it costs you a lot of sweat, tears and a few hairs off your head… At the end of the day it’s a respected institution that vouches for your knowledge, and I encourage anyone who wants to go to university to do it if it’s what they really want.

How did I decide to work in computing?

Near the end of my first year I managed to pass my subjects, but I knew it wasn’t what I liked. I didn’t know what I wanted. I’d spent all of sixth form thinking I wanted to be an economist, and at this point I knew I didn’t want to live with this for the next three years of my life (I value time enormously, because it’s the most precious resource a human being has) and I didn’t want to waste mine.

Between one thing and another, I started learning HTML and CSS thanks to an ad on YouTube, and it really caught my attention. Being able to create websites, style them and make them interactive with a programming language was mind-blowing to me. I had to act fast, so I applied for a place on the higher vocational course in web application development. Since it’s such a popular course and I applied so late, I obviously ended up on a huge waiting list.

When I saw I had no place, my world fell apart. I thought: what do I do now? What am I going to study? It was very hard to explain to my parents that I’d spend a year “doing nothing”, without any formal education. Yet a world of possibilities opened up for me. I signed up for lots of courses, and eventually I discovered the EOI, where I did several bootcamps, among them one on cloud computing and another on full-stack programming, where I learned a huge amount.

The attitude.

As I said, my world fell apart when I thought I wouldn’t be “studying”. But I wasn’t going to sit there crying. I knew I had to do something with my life, so I got to work and designed “a routine” in which I studied much more than when I was at university. For context, I studied around 8 hours a day, every day of the week. I felt that since I wasn’t “studying”, I had to work three times as hard. But my mindset was always to learn. Today I know that if you learn something valuable, it doesn’t matter whether you learned it from a video or from a teacher in class; what matters most is that you know how to use it and apply it in real situations.

I know that keeping up that pace cost me a lot, both socially and in my private life. But I’ve always had (and still have) a goal in mind, and that’s what keeps me moving forward through any adversity. I think that’s the most important thing, and it’s the advice I’d give to anyone who wants to start studying computing: have a goal in mind and be consistent with it.

There will be many moments of frustration when you feel you know nothing (it still happens to me today), but you have to learn to deal with those moments and know your worth. What matters is to iterate and to have a good learning strategy. The people around you matter a lot too. I’ve been lucky that my friends, family and partner support me on this road, which is only just beginning (more on that below), and that’s a great motivation: people trust me and I know I can’t let them down.

The goal.

My goal, like that of many people studying a profession or a degree, was obviously to get a job and make a living doing what I like, to reap everything I sowed along the way, and of course to have a good salary (we’re lucky that salaries in this field are very good). To be completely honest, that last one hasn’t been my priority. My priority is to gain experience and knowledge in a company.

And I’ve reached that goal. Today, 10 March 2023, I can say I’ve officially been hired by a company like PwC. I’m very grateful to them and to Logixs for giving me the chance to join the tech industry and for making the hiring process so pleasant. I truly felt at ease.

It means an enormous amount to me. It’s the product of hours and hours in front of a screen, hours and hours staring at a blank editor with nothing in my head, many tears, many doubts. But I can say it truly is worth it, that giving up is never an option, and that the road is only now beginning. I know this is when I’ll study the most and work the most, but having the chance to keep growing and learning in a workplace and to make a living from what you love is priceless.

Thank you.

I want to thank everyone who has been on this journey, absolutely everyone: family, friends, people I met at bootcamps, even those who have nothing to do with computing but know about this goal, everyone who is here today and supports me, and everyone who didn’t believe in me.

Writing this post fills me with emotion, but in the end that’s what this blog is for: talking about my things and letting it all out. If you’ve read this far, thank you very much.