In July 2019, my father was diagnosed with cancer. Today I am happy to say that treatment has been effective and he is in remission as of writing.
That said I've never been more relieved and thank the people who posted here for pathways and projects they suggested.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to land a developer job. I still had to take odd jobs to help my family until I was laid off in October. Since then I haven't even so much opened an text editor. I think it's because I've been trying to learn web development as a prerequisite for everything else. I still like coding but I kept getting caught up in trying to build projects from scratch and be unique.
That approach is why I never progressed. So for now I'll have to take a different approach and pause the coveted developer pathway. Because I realise it's not where I need to be...yet.
But all those courses and groups weren't in vain because it revealed my true interest and career fit Information Technology.
I realise now that I've been idealizing the creative portion of tech as a substitute for not being able to create art. After actually reflecting on all the skills that I attempted to learn,I came up with career and creative goals. Creative wise, I know I want to make comics and YouTube videos and planned out the year for that.
Career wise,I am actually interested in the operation and analysis of all things technology related.Now that I manage to seperate the two I shifted my focus to entry level IT support roles or training. I had already completed Google Information Support Specialization from Coursera in 2018. But that wasn't enough so I had to dig deeper into the skills I had tried and liked as a hobbies.
Before that I was(am)a member of Cybrary.it and went through the various modules of Comptia, Cisco and Microsoft theory that would prepare me for certification.I dabble with some network security and penetration testing from a membership at StationX
I always thought it would be nice to have certs, but never found a training/testing that wouldn't be ridiculously marked up by for profit institutions. That changed however when I was reached out to by a community employment services news letter I had signed up for and I saw it right there in the list:
JUNIOR IT ANALYST BOOTCAMP via NPowerCanada. The site outlined a 14 week ,FREE, bootcamp that would not only prepare me for Comptia A+ certification, cover the COST of the testing, industry networking/scouting and job/support placement. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEED RIGHT NOW XD!!!!!
I clicked the linked, saw that I met the requirements for the program and applied immediately. This was back in November. Weeks went by then in the middle of December I got to the interview portion. I was honest about my situation and explained everything that I'd done to get into tech on my own. I knew this was my best chance for an actually career if only given a chance.
I was thanked for being honest and open in my interview. I was told accepted candidates would be contacted by early January. I walked out and waited.
Three days later I received a congratulatory email saying I'd been accepted into the program. I finally got my foot in the door moment and in the week since this program has started, it's the first time in nearly a decade that careerwise, felt absolutely right.
Next post will be when we actually start the A+ training
Thanks for reading
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