Why I want to be an engineer

#beginners #career

Hi! My name is Mayu, from Japan.
Now I'm living in Canada and college student majoring in programming. For my first post, I write a bit about my goal as an engineer and myself to keep it in my mind.

My history of career so far
In Japan, it is generally considered good to get a job right after college. So I was also looking for a job while I was a university student. But at that time I didn't understand what kind of job I wanted to get, I just felt that what I want to do in my career is to solve someone's problem. Then, I decided to become a programmer because I thought that if I became a programmer, I could solve a lot of problems in a lot of different ways.

As I had hoped, I got a job with a tech field company. But I couldn't get a position as a programmer because I didn't have the aptitude to be a programmer. Instead I was placed in an office clerk position.

A little later, I quit that job because I couldn't find my goal. But I had to work to live so I was looking for a job at random with no skills, no goal in my life. And fortunately I found a job as an office clerk in purchasing.

At first I was working just to earn money, but I realized that I could get more than just money through my work. So one day I suggested to my boss that he let me try more other jobs to advance my career. However, he told me that he turned it down because I am a woman. According to him, negotiations are not for women. It was too frustrating. I could understand if he had refused my request due to lack of skill, though.
Like that, I couldn't get a position that I wanted to do because I was not suitable again. But this made me notice I was trying to give up on my goals based on what others evaluated again. Then I decided to try what I am interested in. Someone may think it weird, but it's the biggest challenge for me, who has made safety choices.

That's way, I quit that job and moved to Canada to learn programming and English to achieve my goal in my life that I built in the past. :)

Why did I choose to change my career
As I mentioned earlier, I've always wanted to create something that solves someone's problem. And the desire grew ever more through my experience as an office clerk.
When I was an office clerk, I saw many people working overtime with many tasks everyday. But they were almost simple and repetitive jobs. So I made an easy system with Visual Basic Application for co-workers, and they were happy. This made me realize that programming can really help people and that I can create it. At the same time I felt I wanted to make a bigger system that is able to make things easier for a lot of people.

So why did I choose to study abroad instead of in Japan? The purpose is language. Embarrassingly, I had never studied English outside of school and had no interest in it. Because I can live in Japan without English. But after starting programming I realized that if I could understand, speak English, the resources I could get would be wide. Then I chose to learn programming in English. It has been 6 months since I moved to Canada and it is very difficult to learn anything other than my native language. However, using English as a means to learn programming rather than as an end in itself works very well for me. It is because learning English will become very necessary for me.

By the way, I got married 2 years ago. This event also influenced my career. When I got married, I was working as an office clerk yet. And it is also said to be "common sense" in Japan, after getting married, a couple has children, a house, the husband should work hard mainly at his job and the wife should work hard mainly at her housework. I think this way of life is one of happiness. But at least in the company I was in, it was considered normal and a common idea among everyone. So after I got married, my boss was not going to put me in a position where I could challenge because he thought I would have children within a year or two, despite I told him I didn't have any plan like he thought. This made me felt that I've shouldn't get married if I've wanted to challenge something in my career...(Of course, it isn't true!) But if I had many skills, my boss's mind could change. And I'm not able to change how they think about my gender, but I can build up my skill. So I decided to concentrate to improve my skill, not worry about my environment.

My goal as an engineer
As you know, my goal as an engineer is to create useful applications that are easy to use for everyone.
Aside from continuing to achieve this goal, I have another goal ;) That is to make games. I love games. I've played games since I was 5. Through games I made a lot of friend, I had a lot of experiences like enjoyment, patience,
So I hope that one day I create a game that connects people, a game that triggers different emotions, something that can touch someone's life.

At last
Thank you for reading my first post <3

Pursuing my goal is very hard. I realize that there are many things I can't, I'm upset by my own uselessness. But at the same time, I realize that I'm living my life without being driven by others like I used to be. But I am grateful for my past experiences because they have allowed me to think this way now.

And For...
My parents, sister friends who support me from Japan,
My husband who comes to Canada with me,
My teachers and classmates who always help me,
Everyone who is involved with me and supports me,
I will do my best to return the favor in the form of being useful to society.

To be honest, it took a long time to make this post because of my English skill. And a lot of things that I want to write still remain but I can't make sentences well now. I'm very frustrated but this experiences inspire me to keep going. So I will keep to try new things. I'll keep my effort for my goal!