I didn’t expect the be confronted with it so soon, but week four of the Makers pre-course has guided me down the path of starting the first draft of my CV. I wasn’t ready for this.
All the underlying thoughts I have had about myself and my abilities have been strapped to a Saturn V rocket and blasted into the forefront of my mind. I know this is Becky talking, but there is a huge part of Charlotte that agrees with her. Who the hell would ever want to hire me?
For the majority of people who do bootcamps, we are all in the same position. We are intensively retraining to start a career in software development. The majority, it seems, also have the advantage of having had careers in other areas, some even finishing off these careers while doing the part-time pre-course. Although they may be completely unrelated to their new chosen career path, there is still a lot of soft skills that are acquired in these roles and opportunities to demonstrate situations where they have used them recently in a work environment.
But I don’t, really. With the exception of a three month temp job, I started the past decade going back into education as an adult; gaining the qualifications needed to apply to university; getting into university and graduating; applying for and obtaining a place on a prestigious PhD program; then getting sick; being challenged by death to a three year long dance off; winning said dance off; returning back to the PhD four months after having major surgery; realising it wasn’t right for me; then accepting that I needed time to physically, and mentally, recover; became an entirely new person based on the experience and challenges I faced; and now we are at the present day.
How do you write that on a CV?!
On Tuesday night, I opened up to my husband about the feelings I was having. Is there any point of trying, and have we just wasted a large amount of money, if I don’t even believe others will want me?
We got to a point in our discussion where he asked me, what do I want to be? What do I want from this? Without hesitation, I responded;
“I want to be a damn good software engineer, among other things*"
*Mountaineer, climber, trail runner, back-country skier, long distance hiker and author.
And thats the truth. It’s why I’m throwing myself in the path of uncertainty, challenging my intellectual ability, leaving the degree I am still yet to start paying back to gather dust, and opening myself up to the very real possibility of continuous rejection. I want this and I think I have something to offer.
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