Garibaldi
On Getting the Degree
Hi! My most recent excuse for the lack of posts is that I was too busy working at blip.pt and finishing my college degree at the same time. On the next paragraphs, I’ll talk a little bit about it, you can skip that part if you know the ‘story’.
On the second half of the post there’s some photos I took while on Sicily with some good friends. We rented a car, travelled around the island and I snapped some moments with my new (long awaited) camera), the Fuji X100 - which will be properly reviewed later. Enjoy!
PS: I started using copy and decided to test it as the hosting solution for my images, let's see how it goes.
For those who don't know it, about 3 years ago I was a Civil Engineer, working on my second year as a Engineer at Casais Engenharia. I was part of the percentage who had a job but wasn't happy nor feeling remotely accomplished with it. Even working as a structure engineer, designing projects wasn't enough for me. I've always had a lot of curiosity about programming, mainly web development. Although I didn't have any experience with it, I felt I could be good at it and, even more importantly, be happy doing it for a living.
So I took a 'leap of faith' and quit my job, studied for a National Exam and applied for the Computer Science and Engineering degree.
It was a great sacrifice at many levels. The obvious one was not getting paid. Loosing some of my independency, beeing away from the work market and starting a new degree at the age of 25 was not easy as well. Besides that, there's always a small doubt about whether I've made the right decision; and it's hard to fit it when surrounded with so many younger students with different life goals (naturally).
Luckily, I had a family, friends and girlfriend who helped and motivated me throughout these years. Without them it would have been way harder!
In order to earn some money and experience I did some freelance work building some small websites while I studied a lot.
But I must say that a turning point was begining to work as a web developer at blip. They made me feel welcome and made me want to learn even more. I grew a lot while having fun! It's been over a year since I started there, I'm still learning and still loving what I do. I had to finish the last year of the degree while working, which wasn't easy, but was definitely worth it.
I guess what I mean is: it's hard to leave some things 'on hold' and rewind some years of your life to go after what you feel right. But it's even harder not to.
Photo stuff
See you soon,
A. Capelo
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