I haven’t written a proper monthly update since July of 2018, which is almost 2 years ago. Time has been a very limited resource lately, and so I’ll make that my official excuse. Yeah, that’s it.
I have been feeling the itch to start blogging again, although I’m not yet sure exactly what form it will take. The monthly updates are fun, but I also would like to write more “big idea” kind of stuff, and sometimes I just want to talk about me, which is what most of this post will probably consist of. Maybe I’ll just let inertia have it’s way with me, and I’ll do precisely nothing. But in all seriousness, blogging really is time consuming, and time is the most precious resource in the world to me.
On that note, maybe I’ll finally have the guts to delete my social media accounts once and for all. Time will tell, heh?
Being back at school has been a weird experience, in that I already have a skillset and a “real job”, while the people I associate with in my classes are generally 10 years younger than me and relatively inexperienced and are at the bottom of the totem pole called life.
However, the point of going back to school is for me to throw myself back into a situation where I’m also inexperienced, and at the bottom of the heap. When it comes to math and statistics, I am indeed at the bottom. I consider that to be a very good thing as I would consider this school experience to be a complete waste of time otherwise.
Math is something that people love bragging about not being good at, and I’m not going to claim to be free of that particular sin. However, the older I get, the more I regret having avoided learning math my whole life, which relegated me to mathematical impotency.
When I started this journey a year and a half ago, I told myself that I wanted to qualify for and pass a Calculus class. Now, I’m fully aware that many people took Calculus in high school. However, for me, passing Calculus as a 30-something-year-old is going to be a huge accomplishment.
Next semester, I will be officially attempting to accomplish my goal, by taking Calculus as the final class I complete at BYU-Idaho, as I finally(!) close this chapter!
What do I want to do after I graduate? I don’t know. Most likely something very similar to what I’m already doing. Here are my options, though:
- Continue in software engineering. This is the mostly likely scenario and is a great option (I love programming). In this scenario, I would like my next gig to be a significant step up, and I feel like I am qualified for such a thing. I’ve been starting to put my feelers out for job opportunities. I was contacted by a recruiter from Amazon and I’ve already gone through a first round interview. To be clear, to work at a place that hires the best of the best, one generally needs to put in a non-insignificant amount of preparation to make it through the intense interviewing process. I have not had the luxury to prepare, as I’ve been busy learning data science things. However, I was interested in interviewing so that at the very least I would have a better idea of how close I am in skill level to make it at a place like Amazon (and I can always try again in 6 months). I haven’t heard the results from the first round interview yet, and I don’t anticipate that I will progress to the next round, which was expected going into it. But I was pleased with how well I did with the code challenge considering I put in zero preparation. It gave me confidence that it might actually be possible. Give me some more time to study and practice, and it definitely seems within the realm of possibility that I could have a shot. Maybe not necessarily at Amazon either, but hopefully at least someplace where they are doing cool stuff.
- My second option is to attempt a career pivot, and try to get an entry level data science job. I’m not particularly enthused about essentially starting my career over, especially because I already enjoy the one I have. I am interested in data science, but I suspect that to do any of the cool stuff in data science I am going to have to be proficient in math, and I’m still at the point where making it through a first-level Calculus class feels like a major accomplishment.
- Which leads me to another benefit of officially obtaining a bachelors degree. It possibly opens up the door to graduate school (gasp). This probably isn’t likely, but if time and money were no object, I would love to try it.
Where will we end up living? I have not one clue.
NEXT!!
At this point in the blog post, I should add some deprecating humor about how I’ve talked about myself for the past 6 paragraphs and then talk about Emily in order to prove my love to everyone. I should also make sure at the end to add in all the stock things that I’m grateful for, that sounds exactly like what everyone else is grateful for. Look, I’m a social media natural!
Here’s what the rest of us have been up to (I’ll make sure to cherry pick all the good stuff so that we look good).
Of course, Emily has been busy keeping Kev alive (insert obligatory statement to make sure everyone knows that I know how important mothers are). When we moved to the mean streets of Rexburg, Idaho, she kept her graphic and web design job, which was a work from home gig. She took a break during the baby craze/haze. She’s now picked up a second job. Both jobs are variable in terms of how much work she does and are very flexible in hours. Since she’s the one with the boobies, she’s the one feeding Kev, but working seems like it helps break up the monotony and keeps the brain juices flowing.
THIS happened, on May 23:
And it looked like THIS the next day:
The hell?
In other news, Kev is friggin cute, and you’ll probably never make as cute of babies as us! Devastating!
I know you’re really here for the Kev update. He is almost 6 months already, and he does things typical six-month-olds do. He poops, he eats, he rolls, and now he even lets us sleep.
He went through a phase for a couple weeks where he could roll from his back to his stomach, but not from his stomach to his back. For a while there, we had to constantly rescue him when he would roll to his stomach and then proceed to get stuck and start squawking at us. Something like
“eeehehhehhhhhhehhhehehheh!!”
Then we’d help him roll to his back, only for him to roll to his stomach, squawk at us, ad infinitum.
The good news is, it’s only going to get easier from here!
To be continued…how much will Kev poop next? Will he sleep, or will he cry? Can we possibly handle any more cuteness? Find out, on the next exhilarating episode!
