markjeee.com

Success are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy — and of hard work. — Gladwell

I look back on my own past on the things i think i have succeeded, and i can say i had the opportunity, i was prepared for it and i made it. Being prepared turns out to be the biggest challenge.

How can you prepare for something you don’t know yet? Opportunities most often shows up for a very short time, mostly without room for preparation.

For me i remember, i was always interested to do something great. To do something where i can claim superiority. I remember, we were brought up to have this thinking. We were groomed to be great on something (my uncle, the dean, largely contributed to this thinking). I think this motivation fueled the insane amount of time i spent learning, about math, physics and computers. In late high school and college, i spent most of my free time, answering math problems, programming, and reading books in physics. In college, i had only 3 choices, either BS Math, BS Com Sci, or BS Applied Physics (setting out to master robotics) — there is another story how i came close to taking industrial engineering. I guess i learned a lot more this way than others, and actually prepared me for opportunities i didn’t know yet.

Now in relation to opportunities, i can say i am lucky. I know it may sound unusual for me to say this (since i’m largely a me-me-me person), but i believe the family and the people who i have depended on gave me these opportunities. I have lived in an environment (to this day) that allowed me to do what i want, take risks, fail and try again, take initiative, challenge the status quo, and just be different. Also i come from intellectual parents. Both my parents were magna cum laude’s at college. Both i would say were regarded as smart people, which i can imagine means a lot back in the old days.

When i was young, around elementary, i remember, me and my cousins used to dream about stepping on the moon in person — be an astronaut (my uncle had a few telescopes). And it’s not just the kind of fairy tale dream kids usually have, it’s a dream where we think we will eventually do (get a college scholarship, do masters, PHD, learning how to fly planes, apply at NASA — sounds like the plan). In relation to the kind of moon landing i’m doing now, i remember then, we were already learning to program in basic (grade 4 or 5 i think).

Back then, i also remember, we had a lot of opportunities to learn, i read the bible cover-to-cover, the encyclopedia, played monopoly (yes, financial education is important, i just realized this lately), automotive mechanics, dual principles of light, relativity theory, how black holes are formed, anti-matter, played ungodly numbers of hours of famicom (contra, battle city), all kinds of crap, that now when i think of it, made up to what i would say my common and practical knowledge. Sometimes, i’m amazed how some things just feels very natural to me. Now i know why, i just have years of experience, more than probably on average of a typical student learning what’s only required from school.

I’m not claiming i’ve succeeded in everything that i set out to be. A few years ago, i was on a crossroad. I remember thinking, i should have been obedient and just finished college properly, it would have been easy for me to apply for a job. Until now my resume lists most of the failures i have done in the past 10 years. And i have never had any proper employment from any prestigous or known company, the likes of which companies like to look for when considering applicants.

Looking back to that crossroad i’ve got myself into, i can imagine it must have been a tough question. Now, i know my answer to that. I just lost interest on the minor subjects left i have to take, i lost interest in a system that tells what i should learn; instead i set out to do what i love to do, which is programming and solving problems, which i find more interesting.

I am glad i did it, which eventually turns out to be one of the damn best decisions i made. For another post, my other best damn decision is who i married. Yes it’s corny, but it’s not for the same corny reasons. Hehe. :)