It has been quite some time since my last posting. The cohort is going extremely well. As of writing, I have completed the Core 1 exam for Comptia’s A+ certification. This is the first real step I’ve taken to having my skill verified. The only difficulty at this time is the global pandemic that is the corona virus. Due to it’s spread across the globe, my country has insitigated a nation wide quarantine. While this has essentially ground life in this country to a halt, it has not stopped the cohort from continuing.Like it or not, we are deternimed to become Junior Information Technology Analyst.
The staff at NPowerCanada have set up work from home criteria in which we are still expected attend and complete. We’ve switched over to remote learning. For now this has offered some repreive as I find myself being able to focus on the Core 2 modules on my own. A downside, unfortunately, is that there seems to be a lot more impatient from some of the other cohort attendees.Regardless my journey through tech continues uninterrupted.
My Pressing Concerns
While it is a challenging situation that the entire world is facing right now, I am a bit worried about my own employment prospects. Since completing Core 1, candidates were being setup for infield placements, sadly that has been upended in part due to corona. Upsetting as it may be, it’s a chance to work on my own personal branding. When I’m not studying the rest of the IT materials, I’ve actively started working on making a freelance portfolio. Through out my journey through tech personal branding is an area I must work on.
I had also started looking into crowdsourced employment for the time being. Furthermore it’s been about 3 weeks since I last touched the blockchain development course. I plan on resuming that monday but have been refreshing my skills by going onto typing.io and couple of coding books from a recent humble bundle purchase.Since the junior information technology analyst program is designed for entry level, it is important that I get better typing to make documentaion easier.
Plans after the cohort?
The major one is to continue on improving my freelance profile and networking through NPowerCanada. I know that if I do land a job within the next couple of months, I’ve seriously thought about investing in education. Currently I’m looking at Gerogebrown’s Robotics Technician program and Coursera Plus. The reason I’m looking at them now is due to the corona pandemic. Learning to maintain and program robots aligns with my values.The days of doing one thing only and expecting employment has not existed for a lot of decades. By proactively gettting experience and accreditation both both fields, I develop an interdisciplanay skillset. My journey through tech has shown that if I want to increase my chances, I have to always be learning.
These two options are also distance based and cost effective. The George Brown Robotics Certification program is self-paced and simulation based. Once I get a new laptop with required specifications I can see myself enrolling. At the same time, Coursera Plus, has an annual subscription that allows me to access several industry recognized specializations. I completed the Google IT Support Specialization in 2018. The specializations such as cybersecurity, robotics, mathematics for machine learning, artificial intelligence, embedded systems/sensors and cloud engineering would give me access to the type of education I’ve always dreamed of, but could never afford.
Preparing for a Digital Revolution
These last couple of months have really been eye opening. I realize now just how much of my time and potential I was wasting from drinking. The pain of not living up to my own expecations is no longer present. Rather than despair, there is hope. I’ve approached 200 plus days of alcohol sobriety and will reassess at 270 day. At this rate I’m wlll on my way to making it to a full year without booze.
Furthermore, I’ve actually started reassessing my creative goals. I took a step back from drawing again but plan to start back over the weekend. In the meantime I’m going to be writing out a couple of scripts for youtube and using the creative community I’m a part of more frequently. As such I now have some comic ideas again after 2 months. I’m starting to take Japanese seriously again and started a plan for that.
I’ll use the next two weeks of quarantine to catchup on niche skillsets, create some type of content and work on my branding.
The real concern however is will I be able to translate the technical skills into something higher than junior information technology analsyt?
I admit, it’s going to be rough but I have time to build my autonomy for the future.
Thanks for reading
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