I finished college last year, in 2023, with big dreams of conquering the world. But as it turns out, the moment I stepped out into the world, conquering it was a difficult task to achieve. Please forgive my naivety.

To further expound on this disastrous wake-up call, let me walk you through some of the mistakes I made. All in the hopes that you won’t repeat these mistakes, learn from them, or at least be a little entertained.

Do share your experiences too, so that others can be warned. I sure do wish someone had warned me about these things.

To begin, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. Considering that the first two years of college were spent isolated from the world (cough), let’s just say I received my diploma with no idea what was going on. Still I had big dreams of breaking through with a career in tech. This was mostly because of the notion that if you got a tech degree, then a lot of doors would open for you.

And we all know how ludicrous that was. It turns out no one really wants to hire a complete beginner with zero experience, or at least, it would be difficult to find a job.

Please note that I took the work-from-home route, and this is by no means a complete reflection of what others experience. This was just what I experienced.

Moving on, that was my first mistake.

Mistake No. 1: Heading to war with no experience

I learned that you cannot be passive when pursuing a tech degree. I should’ve started building lots of things while studying so that by the time I went job hunting, I could actually put something on my resume.

Because of this realization, while I was submitting my resume on online job sites, I was actually reviewing my long-forgotten lessons in React, JavaScript, and web development in the background. All in the hopes of being hired as a web developer.

Eventually, I did get hired. But not as a web developer, but as a junior marketing developer. Did I have any idea what that meant? Well, kinda? I did read the job description, but that was it. (Desperate times call for desperate measures). Either way, I finally had my first job. Yey!

But I completely forgot about the part regarding what kind of company I was applying to. I wasn’t picky when I was job hunting. So it turns out it was an international company that hired me.

Which is good! Believe me when I say I was completely shocked to find out. I was excited to start. The only problem was my English was terrible, and it turns out international companies love their small talk before the start of every meeting. Guess who stayed silent every time.

Mistake No. 2: My inability to make small talk.

In all my years living on this earth, I avoided having conversations with anyone unless we were talking about school or projects that needed to be done.

So I applaud everyone who has the ability to do small talk. I really struggled at this part of my life. But I learned by observing what my other workmates do. Small talk follows a pattern and I believe through practice and time, I can do small talk as well. Right now, I’m practicing and haven’t fully mastered it yet.

But that isn’t where the struggle ended. For some reason, my biggest struggle has always involved speaking. Which brings us to mistake no. 3.

Mistake No. 3: How do I make it so that I don’t sound gibberish?

This is the part where I learned there are two types of English a Filipino has to learn. There is the conversational English for small talk. And there is the work English for technical talk. Now, I am not sure if this is a real thing, but in my head these languages are two different things.

I already struggle with small talk, and now we have to add technical talk to the list of things I need to learn from scratch.

I really thought that if I chose a career as a developer, there would be as few meetings as possible because we’d be spending most of our time looking at our screens and coding stuff. How silly of me. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. Whoever put that idea in my head needs to be held accountable (I’m looking at you, tech movies).

It turns out you will have to spend more time talking about the problem and every possible solution than actually fixing it. I remembered a time when my team and I spent an hour of me trying to explain what the query does and what each line does, wondering what part was wrong, only to be pointed out that I just had to change one letter in a field to return the right records. An hour of talking for one second to implement the correct solution.

This leads to my fourth mistake.

Mistake No. 4: Textbook answers are never the way.

The number of times I was told that the solution I came up with was wrong because I couldn’t understand something is frightening. If I had a penny every time I heard the phrase “lack of understanding,” I’d be richer now. Which is fine. I don’t hold any resentment towards these things. Instead, it constantly challenges me to look at things from a different perspective and to question everything. Literally everything.

Back in my school days, we were rewarded every time we gave a textbook answer. It was the safest way to go. And at the end of the lesson, when the teacher asked, “Any questions?” you would find students looking down at their desks or giving that one student a side-eye. I think it was because I associated having a question with me unable to understand anything. (Which kind of proved my point! 🙈)

After working, I now realize how important it is to ask questions every time you can’t understand something. Because the thing you can’t understand will affect you in the long run.

It’s best to water the dried plant now than wait for a rain that will drown it.

This can also help you not answer questions in a textbook sort of way because you don’t memorize answers, you understand them, and that is why you are able to answer.

As you can see, I made a lot of mistakes, and there would be more, but this writer would turn this article into a novel if I had to add more. Making mistakes is part of life, especially as a beginner. I remember what my co-worker told me one time. He said, you learn more things when making mistakes than not having made one.

That’s why we have the quote “Learn from our mistakes.” Because that is how we will be able to do anything and improve.

Thank you for reading my first article! Comment down below your thoughts and what you’d like me to write about next!