My journey of programming seems like an absolute accident, but only I know it was meant to be.

My First Job

But, before we dive into that. I am gonna tell you my story of how accidentally I stumbled upon this journey. I studied petroleum engineering in college for 4 years. The reason I got into that was because one of uncles informed (unofficially) my parents that petroleum engineering would promise me a lucrative job someday. Unfortunately, he was kind of the educated guy within this big family of mine. So, in the end, my parents and I, we bought that crap.

After 4 years of college (well, I did pretty well in college, FYI), I continued studying petroleum geology for my Master’s. You would think that I got into a major oil company. But, No! The time I got graduated, the oil price was plummeting. Major oil companies were just too busy laying off people rather than hiring them. So, I kind of had no choice but changing my career. But, to be honest, I don’t like working in the oil industry. So, even thought I had to change my career, I was never worried. Because I once prepared to go to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D, I took TOEFL and GRE. And their scores turned out to be fairly good; So, I decided to teach TOEFL speaking. Well, in China, doing that is actually a bit lucrative. The average payment for me was more than 10K per month, of course, before taxes. To be honest, that’s great for a newly-graduated student. As you get more experience of teaching, you could also teach other subjects as well, then you could earn more than that. So, that was like a sliver lining of this “can’t going to the States” thing.

Roughly 8 months later, I suddenly felt overwhelmed by this job. I mean, it’s a great job indeed - you don’t have to deal with complex relationships and all; and I love English; and you earn money just by talking. But, really, I wasn’t a good teacher. I was so good to be a student that I forget how to be a good teacher. I mean, I am fast-learner and can put up with a great deal of boredom of study. But, when it comes to teaching, the content is one thing, and how fun your class can be is another import thing. Saddly, I wasn’t a funny teacher. Plus, it’s not challenging enough - you repeat most of your stuff every time just with minor alterations. It’s physically demanding, that’s for sure, because sometimes you have to lecture 10 hours straight. But, as a human being, you want to be intellectually challenged. So, I quit.

iOS Programming as My Career

While I was struggling about quitting teaching, I had this vague idea of doing computer programming. But, really, I din’t have much experience of doing this. All I had was passion, which, with good reason to believe, is ungrounded and wild.

So, on February 27th, I bought my first Mac and was ready to take this wild passion seriously. Well, without my wife’s support, understanding, and most importantly fanning the flames, I hardly could man up to buy this Mac. So, my wife basically dragged me to the Apple Store nearby and bought this Mac.

After four month of teaching my self iOS progrmming skills, I got my first job as iOS programmer. Those four month are gruesome and demanding. But, every day it was like a new day for me and I felt like I relived again. As I was an engineering student and took some programming courses before, it didn’t take me a lot of trouble to figure out a plan to acqire neccessary skills of iOS programming.

The End

Now I have been programming roughly a year. I still know there is a lot to learn and feel passionate as if every day was the first day I decided to become a programmer.