This week, we watched a video called “A Hero’s Journey”. There were several points that stuck in my mind, which I will highlight and elaborate on here.
The Hero’s Journey is characterized by three factors. 1. To live every moment of your life because it matters. 2. To live because you have an important mission. 3. To see struggles as adventures.
As I’m entering adulthood and considering these questions, I’m encountering more and more experiences in which such themes play a role. Most notably, in sifting through the multitude of educational choices to discover what I resonate with. As my junior year of college converged upon me, and with no declared major to speak of, I took my first step into software engineering.
Why?, you may ask. Because I possessed no inclinations as far as what industry I wanted to work for, but I knew I liked video games and wanted to create them. More than that, however, I thought my inborn traits would suit engineering, (i.e. problem-solving, strategy-forming, creativity, etc).
Software engineering was among the biggest, if not the most momentous, struggle I’ve encountered in 21 years of life. Without a lick of programming experience to speak of, it took me approximately 45 minutes to code my first assignment: Hello World. Later on, I could do that thing in five seconds, but in the beginning it confounded me. I had never before encountered such a steep learning curve, but that wasn’t a bad thing. It was the struggle. And, though my frustration-addled mind didn’t believe it at the time, it was one of the best adventures I’ve experienced. Because I put my mind to something I believed was impossible. Engineering is for smart people, extremely smart, capable, motivated people. For a brief, bittersweet period of time, I threw my shoulders back, tilted my head up high, and marched amongst their ranks.
Dotted with moments of extreme, cry-into-my-keyboard-despair and galvanized euphoria, those three months of intense study were a great lesson to me about the importance of trying impossible things. As the video said, “It’s not the prize at the end, but how the hero is changed in the process.” Although I closed the software engineering chapter of my life, I was able to start the next: Business Management. It wasn’t about saying yes or no to engineering. It was about discovering the next phase in the process, not only for my educational goals, but for my personal growth, though I didn’t realize it at the time. The video also stated, “Failure once so feared, seen in reverse, only made you stronger.” I can see that now.
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