I'm only understanding now what I was learning then

I went to post-secondary school twice, the first time I went to SAIT, from 2005 -2009, and I wasn’t a good student. I wasn’t committed to learning, some of the courses were too easy, and I skipped a lot, and that meant that I really struggled in the hard or interesting ones. The course I was in was highly interesting - Mechanical Design Technologist, and it’s unfortunate that I missed so much opportunity to learn and excel, but hindsight is 20/20.

My second stint in post-secondary was at Mount Royal University, and there I really connected with the material and found my groove. I was taking Computer Information Systems, and it was half comp-sci, half business. I loved both aspects and really immersed myself. For the comp sci side, I was reading above and beyond into genetic algorithms and the singularity (not many books have had such a profound impact on me as “The age of spiritual machines” by Ray Kurzweil), and on the business side, I was doing start up courses, pitching courses, and trying to build real businesses.

The title of this article is a quote that I wrote down while watching Colin Hanks’ documentary about John Candy “I like me” - it really struck me as a strong truth about growing up. You don’t truly understand what you’re really learning until you have that hindsight perspective that only time can provide. For John Candy, he was talking about learning improv and stagecraft from SCTV by doing sketches for the show.

I think the adage that I’m dancing around here is that you “go to university to learn how to learn”, but I’m not sure that was my experience. I definitely learned how to cram - I was listening to books on tape, using TTS systems to have my papers, assignments, etc. read to me in order to help digest the information I also forayed into speed reading apps that eliminate your need to move your eyes when reading and tune your wpm to find your optimal reading speed. These all certainly helped me pass tests, and maybe that qualifies as some methods of learning how to learn, but the thing that I learned that helped the most was how to make my personal and educational and business lives align closer so that I could possibly do everything that I was asked to do.

You see the second time through school was an all-or-nothing situation for me, my first diploma combined with my lack of full time employment (I was self employed) meant that getting a job with that diploma was essentially a non- sequitur. Getting a job in the mechanical design field would be difficult. I had been working with an entrepreneurial man named Kodi, who certainly taught me about trying to turn your hobbies into income, which is something that really speaks to me, to feel like you never work, because without a paycheque, what would I be doing anyways? Over time though, it was clear that our business was waning, and our ability to pull in new work wasn’t great. I distinctly recall a few months making a couple hundred dollars, and basically living off of a credit card. Cool if you’re chasing your dreams, horrible if you’re just making ends meet.

In that situation, and also because of my lack of attendance and effort at SAIT, I didn’t exactly have a plethora of options for school. I put myself on the waitlist for an interesting program at Mount Royal called BCIS. And I called them everyday for updates on the waitlist. That actually worked. The woman on the other end of the phone, telling me “alright, you’ve been calling lots, let’s put you to the front of the list” was about the best news I’d ever heard.

So now in school the second time, I had to a) make money, and b) achieve my dreams in a compressed time period. But I had found it. I found passion. I understood how I could make money with skills that people wanted. At the time, it was Wordpress websites.

Aligning my skills, interests, school and work all together served me greatly this is what it feels like to have stars align for you. I think in part I was driven by the general excitement in the software industry at the time it felt like a boon and I could get to be a part of it, and better than that I was actually good at it and I enjoyed it. Wins all around.

Fast-forwarding to today, where the industry is in more than a little slump, friends are being laid off left & right, they have trouble finding new work I still really enjoy creating software and am grateful to be a part of it. I’ve learned now that to drive that passion in others is to help them align their passion in the way that I did. Part of that is team building, you can’t try to drag folks who aren’t interested in the job through to success, you have to find natural alignment. The skills part is easy, most of that can be taught, and that will be easier if the natural curiosity is there. The last piece of the puzzle is accomplishment, folks need to have a strong sense of ownership or stake in the claim so that they truly want it.