It Is Never Too Late to Start Your Journey
There he was: the chairman of the school's parents association. For me, sixteen at that time, one of the true wizards of my small world. My mum told me he was the one who created their website.
"Should I approach him now? Scary. I do not know him at all. But... he knows how to create websites and I want to know too. OK, David, take a deep breath. Yes. Go forward. Towards him. Go." With all my collected courage I asked: "How did you create the parents association website?" His response: a huge letdown
Even though he was super nice and helpful, his answer basically boiled down to: "I have no clue, I just fired up something with WordPress." Bummer. Nothing to gain here. No mentor who could guide me towards the ways of web development wizardry. Yet another disappointment, just like the IT lessons debacle a year prior.
IT School Lessons Disappointed My Thirst of Knowledge Too
One random day in my early teens, I dabbled with an online game where you could customize your profile with basic HTML. This triggered a deep desire to learn more about web development. "But where could I learn more about it?" asked my thirteen-year-old self. I knew that the fifteen-year-olds had IT classes. Surely that would be the place to learn these kinds of things. Life continued, and this desire just had to pause for a while.
I was SO excited when IT classes finally started. The teacher walked into class, introduced himself and started his lectures with Microsoft Word. We went through topics like: "How do you format texts?" And the following week: "How do you create footnotes?" Thrilling.
Week after week, I hoped to start with web development. But time and time again, Word and Excel were on the menu. Half a year of disappointments later, we finally had lessons on HTML. Finally! But the curriculum on HTML was concluded after 3 weeks of the very basics. I barely learned more than what I did from the profile customization I did prior. What a letdown.
Without Having Started, How Could I Compete With Nerds Who Programmed Since Age 10?
Now you understand why I was so excited and anxious when asking the chairman about web development. And why his answer crushed my hope of becoming a web developer. "I would never be able to compete with all those nerdy kids who had been coding since age ten. I had no chance. I did not know how and I was already so far behind. Best to lay that dream aside and focus on something else."
Life moved on. I completely forgot about my developer ambitions for another two years, since a lot was going on. My family situation got messy. Teachers did not get along with my indifferent attitude towards school and especially towards homework. I failed classes and had to repeat a year. And then I dropped out and switched to evening classes. Boy, was that a great decision!
I Finally Started Coding After Dropping Out, And the Rest Is History
Suddenly, I had lots of time on my hand. Instead of going to school five days a week with tons of homework, I only had to be at night school twice or thrice a week. Gone was the student micromanagement through homework assignments, replaced by teachers who just presented the full curriculum and expected you to manage yourself and put in the work for the final exams.
And guess what, even while learning for all these tests I had plenty of time to do whatever I wanted. Together with a friend and my brother, who also had extra time on their hands, we decided to create a website which could compare mobile tariffs. With a clear goal in mind, we simply started. We read blogs, watched YouTube tutorials, and after weeks and months had passed, shipped our first website. Despite all the friction, the disappointments, the self-doubt, here I was with a live website. Something to be super proud of! An amazing milestone which kickstarted my career.
Four Takeaways From My Journey
With all that being told, I have three lessons to take away from my story:
Lesson #1: Life Happens, Be Gracious When You Have to Hit Pause On Your Dreams
Life happens. We all have obstacles thrown our way. Be it something minor like boring IT classes or something bigger like somebody important getting ill - it is okay if you hit pause on some or more of your dreams. Focus on your current storm and come back later. That is fine.
Lesson #2: It Is Normal to Have Doubts, Just Stop Comparing
Of course it is natural to have doubts about your future as a teenager. But that is not unique to teenies. Us adults have those doubts too. I still have similar thoughts today:
"I do not fully understand AI. I have barely used it yet. Will I even be able to compete? There are so many people who already have years of experience within that field, but not me."
"My blog is so small. I cannot write as well as others."
etc...
You will have your own doubts about yourself too, and that is fine too. Accept you are human.
But just remember to stop comparing. It is unfair to compare yourself with established people who already started 5 or 10 years ago. Why create doubts with an unfair imbalance? The reality of it is, 5 years from now people who are at the beginning are going to look up to you as the expert.
Lesson #3: Just Start and Give It Time (Most Likely Years)
And with that being said, whatever your goals are: It will take time. So whether you want to learn programming, AI, woodworking, starting a side-hustle, counseling or whatever you enjoy, just allocate a fixed time slot to it every week, and simply start. Time and consistency will do the rest.