College is great. It gives those an opportunity that may not have otherwise been able to succeed in the world. I thought my opportunity to make money would be by getting a degree in finance. After all, I though the world revolved around money and the way to make money was in the financial world.
I was pretty good at finance. It came pretty easily to me and, if I am completely honest, I did not have to work very hard to get A's in my classes. Naturally, I found a job working for a large financial firm in the operations department. It was a good job right out of college and used the skills and knowledge I had acquired over the last four years (okay, let's be honest, I took five years).
Again, the work came easy to me. It never really challenged me at a level I would have liked from work. So, I made my own challenge. I was doing the same processes over and over every day and felt there had to be a better way to accomplish the same work without the manual processes done multiple times. I had always been a fan of Excel and started looking for a solution to my problems.
I found Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). It worked perfectly. It also added a challenge to my work, finding a way to automate the mundane work I was doing. This expanded to helping other teams do the same. I wrote many new applications to help in others daily work and learned a little about coding along the way.
Well, I got bored and wanted a bigger challenge. I left the financial world to take a shot at using SQL. Lucky for me (although I didn't think that at the time) the first job I got after leaving finance was at a terrible company. Management was bad the position I was in was not defined well and was not a position that seemed important from others around. I left after a short time to use more SQL at another financial firm.
My college years made me think I could do anything and all the roles I had been employed in did not challenge me to a point where I felt I couldn't do something. Well, after I got experience in SQL I wanted a larger challenge and got a job using C#.
Earth shattered! Well, not really, but I discovered that I wasn't as smart as I thought. I actually had to work at something and it doesn't come easily for me. Object oriented programming was a much harder challenge than even all my classes put together in school. Google has become my best friend. I spend a lot of time searching for my answers. I am no longer the top performer (I had reviews almost every year that showed my peers rated me this way at my first job).
A lot of learning to go.
I was pretty good at finance. It came pretty easily to me and, if I am completely honest, I did not have to work very hard to get A's in my classes. Naturally, I found a job working for a large financial firm in the operations department. It was a good job right out of college and used the skills and knowledge I had acquired over the last four years (okay, let's be honest, I took five years).
Again, the work came easy to me. It never really challenged me at a level I would have liked from work. So, I made my own challenge. I was doing the same processes over and over every day and felt there had to be a better way to accomplish the same work without the manual processes done multiple times. I had always been a fan of Excel and started looking for a solution to my problems.
I found Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). It worked perfectly. It also added a challenge to my work, finding a way to automate the mundane work I was doing. This expanded to helping other teams do the same. I wrote many new applications to help in others daily work and learned a little about coding along the way.
Well, I got bored and wanted a bigger challenge. I left the financial world to take a shot at using SQL. Lucky for me (although I didn't think that at the time) the first job I got after leaving finance was at a terrible company. Management was bad the position I was in was not defined well and was not a position that seemed important from others around. I left after a short time to use more SQL at another financial firm.
My college years made me think I could do anything and all the roles I had been employed in did not challenge me to a point where I felt I couldn't do something. Well, after I got experience in SQL I wanted a larger challenge and got a job using C#.
Earth shattered! Well, not really, but I discovered that I wasn't as smart as I thought. I actually had to work at something and it doesn't come easily for me. Object oriented programming was a much harder challenge than even all my classes put together in school. Google has become my best friend. I spend a lot of time searching for my answers. I am no longer the top performer (I had reviews almost every year that showed my peers rated me this way at my first job).
A lot of learning to go.
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