Follow your passion, be prepared to work hard and sacrifice, and, above all, don’t let anyone limit your dreams. – Donovan Bailey
A lot of employers these days will often want candidates to be passionate about the job they are applying to. But what does it really mean to be passionate about something? Here, I will talk about what I think being passionate about something means and how I came to be passionate about technology and programming.
How I describe being passionate for something falls on two things: doing something you love and the amount of time you put into your craft. For many people, finding something they’re truly passionate about can take a very long time. They may change careers multiple times until they find something they love doing every day at work while some search many years but never end up finding it at all. Some know exactly what they want to do when entering their undergraduate studies for the first time while others find out after graduation. Unfortunately, I fall into the latter.
Luckily, it is never too late to start learning and to pursue what you believe in and love. I noticed programming to be a passion of mine when I was spending a tremendous amount of time writing code, building apps and trying to figure out how things worked. When I was stuck on a problem, it would take me hours to look into it and I would take breaks if I couldn’t come up with a solution. But during those breaks, I would always think back to the problem and how I can solve it. However, the most rewarding part of this journey is when I am able to find out the problem and run the program as expected. Soon, I realized that I was thinking about code and how to write them every minute of the day and it was then when I was sure that this is my future and my career.
Learning how to code was not an obligation I had to fulfill or homework that I had to finish for school. It was a hobby and something I enjoyed doing. Remember when you went to school and had math or science homework? You might have only done what was required and some might not have done them at all. When I’m learning about programming and building applications, I would always do more than what was required and always thirsty for more knowledge. An example of this was learning about iOS development after Udacity’s iOS developer program. There is so much more to learn about iOS after Udacity that I really wanted to learn and practice. So I bought several courses on iOS from the Udemy platform to solidify my developer skills and also to learn about new technologies such as Apple’s ARKit and CoreML frameworks to develop apps that are smarter and more engaging.
To be passionate about something is not to work on something you are obligated to do but rather it is something you love doing. You will find any reason to do it and it is always on your mind. You will come across challenges along the way but will never give up no matter how challenging it is. You will finish a task you are working on but will always find new projects to further develop your skills. And lastly, you will read on the topic and learn about it every day and it is something you can never stop talking about to your friends and family. To end this article, I will leave you a quote by Steve Jobs, one that greatly summarizes my whole blog into just a few lines.
The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking, don’t settle. -Steve Jobs.
Road to Software Engineer 