Growing up I was always “good” at math and eager to learn it. In kindergarten I found videocassettes at the library that taught me multiplication and division using gum drops. In third grade I spent math class working the textbook from cover-to-cover until my teacher had to borrow the fourth- and fifth-grade textbooks for me to use. In high school I took advanced courses, scored exceptionally well on exams, and was well into Calculus before I entered college. So naturally, I majored in English.
It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to major in English or that I particularly disliked the idea of a more technical degree; I just had no idea what the path to a technical job looked like. I knew how to be a doctor or a lawyer: college + med school or college + law school. I had seriously researched these careers and decided they weren’t for me. My dad was an accountant and I had a pretty good idea what kind of math knowledge and education that entailed, but he didn’t really make a lot of money and didn’t seem to love his job too much. But as far as anything else? It seemed so out of reach.
Growing up it seemed like to be a physicist, programmer, or rocket scientist required some level of scientific or mathematical genius. In high school I felt like I had learned basically nothing about those subjects and it seemed too daunting to choose a major in college I knew so little about and try to make a career from it. At my high school there was exactly one chemistry class, one physics class (apart from the remedial one), and precisely nothing about programming available at all. Math started with Algebra, went through Calculus, then kind of just ended? Anytime I heard of someone succeeding in a technical field, it was because they had checked out a book from the library and built a rocket, learned physics from their scientist parents, or built the internet in their garage.
Fortunately that is far from true, though I wish my younger self could have known it then. Ask anyone in the field and they will assure you that there are plenty of at least semi-successful software engineers of only average intelligence. There is a high bar for rocket scientists, but not every engineer is a certified genius or necessarily obsessed over physics at a young age. Here I am starting a career in software at age 30-something and I’m far from alone in this endeavor.
Perhaps a contributing factor to my early career-blindness was that back then internet was still on dial-up and far from as comprehensive in its content as it is now. A lot of the careers on the market now weren’t even dreamed of when I was a freshman and even the software I’ll be working with wasn’t around when I got my first bachelor’s degree.
It may be a bit of a roundabout way of saying it, but my point is that a lot of times we underestimate what we are capable of. We choose to go down paths because they are a little straighter or better decorated when the path that takes us to where we really want to go is muddy, turns just out of sight, and is mostly obscured by overgrown shrubbery (I mean, programmers aren’t well known for going outside, much less gardening). And this applies especially to the younger generation who have frankly spent most of their formative years in a box with windows and an underpaid, overworked educator who nine times out of ten is also looking to start a new career. So to the people who have found something they love, share what you know with young minds so they can find it too. And if you are stuck in something you don’t love, don’t be afraid to look down another path; you might have only one life, but you don’t have to have only one career.
