Prefacing
A year ago, I would've laughed if you told me this was coming.
Back in high school I did this weird thing where I was doing an Associate's in Software Engineering at the same time as regular classes. 7 AM sociology, 8 AM object-oriented programming. Worked on tons of projects with friends, got my hands dirty, it was great.
But databases? I absolutely hated them. The theory felt suffocating. I literally swore I'd never touch databases again.
Then senior year we did a bigger project. Started learning data modeling. Slowly stopped hating it so much.
By college, it wasn't a burden anymore. Actually had a solid foundation that helped me in jobs. But I never thought it would become this.
The Mess
I walked into my first corporate job as a mid-level developer with zero clue what I was doing. Just trying to survive. Learn fast, move faster.
When I finally got the bigger picture, I looked at the database. It was a mess. Like, the kind of legacy codebase that gets touched by tons of developers over years and just gets worse. Queries that should take seconds took minutes. To show a basic dashboard, I had to check five tables and write joins that made zero sense.
It was obvious something was wrong but we were too swamped to really dig into it. Delivery was tight. I did what I could at the time but it wasn't enough. I documented what I could. I drew diagrams. I explained it to whoever would listen.
To be honest, it wasn't perfect. Even some seniors didn't get why we needed so many joins, which was very frustrating.
Teaching Was The Change
Then something shifted. I got close with my teammates, we paired almost every day. They wanted to get better at backend development. And I realized something obvious, nobody had actually taught them what to look for in the database.
So I started teaching them and encouraging them to learn. Just basics. What each table actually stored. How to filter, select and update without breaking things. How to write a query that shows what they want.
I'll never forget the moments where each of them wrote a query solo and it actually worked. They got it. And I felt something I'd never felt at that job before, like real pride. The knowledge mattered because they mattered. Still proud of them for that.
Within weeks the whole team understood it better. Even our senior started paying attention. We optimized stuff in that database together. I was actually proud of what we built.
But then I realized something. I was excited about the database optimization and analysis, but not just that. I was excited because I'd taught someone, they actually grew from it and we saw a project-wide change.
The Pull
At that point I was obsessed. Not with databases themselves, but with the gap. How much of our industry runs on fragile infrastructure because people don't know the basics. How many good developers never get exposed to this stuff because nobody teaches it.
Then an email shows up. A 12-week Data Engineering program.
I enrolled right away. No second thoughts.
This wasn't casual for me. Part of me was terrified. What if I sucked at it? What if I enrolled and realized I hated data engineering? What if this was just another thing I'd get obsessed with for a month then drop?
But I had to find out. Because if teaching databases to someone and spending way too much time in SSMS doing absurd joins lit something up in me like that, what would actually learning the systems that power data for an entire company do?
What Changed
The bootcamp blew my mind. Databricks, PySpark, Data Mesh, Medallion Architecture, Data Security, Data Pipelines. Stuff I didn't even know existed.
And I loved it. Not like in some abstract way, but like this is actually part of my journey way. Because honestly, I'm looking at data infrastructure now but I know this is leading me toward ML eventually.
My data engineering team presented our final project a few weeks ago. One of the most challenging things I'd done. But being with people who actually cared, learning from them, building something real, that really mattered.
What Comes Next
I'm going for my Databricks certification. But more than that, I'm trying to remember something I can't forget. When something grabs you like this, when you can't stop thinking about it, you don't wait around. You just go.
I spent years in the past hating databases because I thought they were so boring. Now, I can't not think about them. They really are the foundation for everything, and honestly, they should get more credit.
If this hits you, if you've felt pulled toward something random or you've taught someone and felt that rush, drop it in the comments. I wanna hear your story. We need more people shipping stuff they're learning about. We need more people actually teaching.
That calling doesn't disappear if you ignore it, you just gotta listen.
What's one thing you're obsessed with right now that scares you?
Drop it in the comments. Let's share experiences like this.
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