Introduction

In my first year of college, I often imagined myself becoming a professor in my major, mechanical engineering.

I graduate from school with high grades and earn a master's degree. Leaving behind cherished friends and parents, I fly off to the distant United States to pursue my PhD. After overcoming challenging hurdles, I diligently write my dissertation and complete my postdoctoral training. After a long journey, I finally become a professor.

On my first lecture day, I enter the classroom and say, "Fifteen years ago, I sat right here." As I step up to the podium, I add, "It took me 15 years to climb this one step."

It’s a sentimental fantasy. Yet, if I could realize such a scenario, I still think it would be impressive. Back then, as a freshman, I believed that dedicating my life to achieving this splendid dream was the best answer for my life.

Now, many years later, I find myself in a profession—frontend developer—that I didn’t even know existed during my first year.

Honestly, this outcome is not the result of any grand ambition. I simply followed the light emitted by amazing individuals, and that led me here. Working alongside them made me want to continue living in that manner. I tried to be someone fitting for such aspirations. The time spent felt like it was the answer I had given to life.

Time in Mechanical Engineering

My major is mechanical engineering, which was the best option available based on my entrance exam scores. Like many high school seniors at the time, I thought I would enjoy the major I chose based on my scores.

As previously mentioned, I easily assumed I would become a professor in mechanical engineering and naturally expected to continue climbing the ladder of success. It felt as if I had obtained a decent score in the entrance exam and gained admission to a good university, believing my life would follow a monotonically increasing trend like a linear function graph.

However, as in all fields, excelling in mechanical engineering was neither easy nor straightforward. Though I had only been a freshman for less than a year, I quickly realized that achieving what I envisioned was truly challenging. I also recognized that I lacked a clear motivation to accomplish such difficult tasks.

Thus, I did nothing. I did not even know what to do. I attended classes sporadically but seldom engaged fully. During exam periods, I would follow the crowd to the library, but I often spent hours staring blankly.

With no enthusiasm for any subject and knowing almost no one, I let two years drift by while my grades plummeted. Eventually, I was pushed by my parents to join the military after finishing my second year.

Time in the Military and the Start of Programming

The military was a good place to spend time without thought. I put aside worries about what to do after an undesired major, academic concerns, and simply lived a straightforward life. After undergoing training, carrying out duties, washing uniforms, and taking leave, over a year passed.

One day, someone created a simple macro on a work computer. This macro simplified the repetitive tasks of copying and pasting and converting with just a single shortcut.

I found out that the creator was a junior from the computer science department at Seoul National University. I approached him to inquire about how he created such a macro, and he replied it was done using Python. With little to do at the time, I began learning the Python language he mentioned.

I completed "Jump to Python" in the barracks and fiddled with the macro with that junior. About a month before discharge, I stumbled upon the Baekjoon Online Judge website while searching online and began solving problems. I mainly tackled simple problems that did not require special algorithms. By the time I was discharged, I had solved about 200 problems.

Time for Algorithms

After discharge, I found myself without anyone to study programming with. Thus, in 2019, I joined the algorithm club at school, the Sogang ICPC Team, and the KakaoTalk open chat known as 'Baekjoon Room'. In fact, the name of the community was not that important; what mattered were the people waiting for me there.

As soon as I joined, I saw several individuals appearing as if enchanted by something, solving problems on Baekjoon. They discussed dynamic programming, network flows, and various trees every day.

Instead of attending classes, they solved problems on Baekjoon, contemplated problems while walking, and regularly shared their solutions with each other. Whenever I asked questions, everyone excitedly and kindly provided answers.

Before long, I also had the opportunity to meet them in person. They presented in a PPT about how to solve problems on Baekjoon and continued solving problems together. Some even expressed that they would solve Baekjoon problems regardless of having 1 trillion Won.

It was the first time I encountered individuals who were genuinely passionate about something and pursued self-motivated study. This was a significant shock to me. Up to that point in college, I had not shown interest in schoolwork or anything else, yet I encountered people who worked hard regardless of the subject! I still think they were extraordinarily admirable.

As I interacted with such individuals, I returned to school in 2020. The mechanical engineering department, where I had little interest or acquaintances, welcomed me back. While occasionally eating with computer science students and solving Baekjoon problems, I found myself wishing to transfer to the computer science department.

However, even at that time, I could not easily change my career path. Mechanical engineering was still a major with considerable demand and potential. My grades were low, but I had invested a significant amount of time. Thus, I decided to take a few foundational computer science courses like data structures.

Time in the Hospital

In the second semester of 2020, I took five mechanical engineering courses along with data structures. However, around the time of the midterms, I suddenly experienced severe abdominal pain. After a lengthy medical evaluation and several tests, the diagnosis revealed that I had Crohn's disease, a rare and incurable illness. Since my condition was critical, I was admitted to the hospital and soon underwent surgery. Taking a leave of absence became inevitable. It was a painful time.

I became one of the few people in my twenties to have legally received fentanyl. At that time, fentanyl was frequently reported in the news as a new drug, making the moment seem noteworthy enough for me to capture in a photo. Even though it was painful, experiencing surgery and being in the hospital as a twenty-something felt rare and prompted me to want to document such moments.

Being in the hospital brought immense psychological distress beyond just physical pain. I worried about falling behind due to taking a leave of absence, along with concerns about my future health.

Especially, I felt intensely that my time living healthily and energetically might be running out. When I pressed the call button for help, young nurses, younger than me, would rush in and ask, "How much does it hurt? Please rate it on a scale from 1 to 10," which magnified my feelings of powerlessness, lying there without any role.

I began to wonder if it truly matters whether mechanical engineering is a widely demanded major or if I become a professor later. Most of what I had done and believed I should do was sacrificing the present for the future. Studying mechanical engineering was tedious, but I did it to get a job, and I also needed to engage in unexciting undergraduate research experience for employment.

Yet, I found myself lying in bed clasping my aching abdomen, not in the future I had envisioned but in this unimaginable illness. What does it matter where I will be 5 or 10 years from now? Is there even any certainty that such a future will unfold? Just as I never imagined I would be lying in a hospital bed at twenty-four, I have no way of knowing what future lies ahead.

In light of this, wouldn’t it be better to pursue a path that offers at least a hint of interest or excitement? Instead of clinging to my major while regretting the time spent, wouldn’t it be worthwhile to follow the path of those remarkable individuals I have seen?

Those who said they would solve Baekjoon problems even if they had 1 trillion Won. Individuals who seem to know what they want to do and what brings them joy. People who can express their love for what they do without a moment's hesitation. Do they not know something? Would I learn something if I pursued this path alongside them? I no longer care about distant future goals; these computer enthusiasts appear so captivating, and it feels right to follow them.

Once Again, Time in Mechanical Engineering

I returned to school after recovering and completed my rehabilitation, starting again in the first semester of 2021. I immediately began my second major in computer science. By that time, I had friends who studied algorithms, and I was well-established within the club. Many welcomed my first steps toward a double major.

However, after my time in the military, I found that revisiting mechanical engineering, while not particularly interesting, was manageable. At times, I even wondered why I had found it so challenging before. It felt wasteful to abandon my major now.

Thus, I joined the robotics lab in the mechanical engineering department. I thought it could leverage my second major in computer science, and this field seemed somewhat enjoyable.

The people I met in that lab were undoubtedly impressive and remarkable. I often ponder whether my experience would have changed had I encountered those individuals before becoming a freshman or during my military service. I sometimes still imagine that I might have thrived happily among them in the mechanical engineering department.

Our professor, who had just joined, was brimming with enthusiasm. The graduate students and undergraduates in this promising robotics lab were intelligent and passionate about research. As a founding member, I helped assemble lab shelves from the start. Consequently, unlike in other labs, there was no worry about turf battles. I am confident that if I had expressed a desire to pursue a master's in that lab, the professor and my peers would have welcomed me wholeheartedly.

However, the only downside of this perfect lab was that I found the studies uninteresting. I felt compelled to keep up with passionate peers who were genuinely engaged. Thus, I began to think that if I could not feel interest in such an ideal lab, mechanical engineering was certainly not the right path for me.

I shared these thoughts with my professor. He had attended KAIST and told me about the many students he had seen who pursued graduate studies in a field they were uninterested in, merely following a predetermined path and struggling. He congratulated me for recognizing my lack of interest in this field so early on.

This led me to fully detach my heart from mechanical engineering. I continued to take a few major courses, performing decently but with no meaning beyond simply fulfilling degree requirements.

Path of a Developer

I completely shifted my career to computer science. The friends all pursuing a similar path illuminated my way. Because my motivation was clear, I studied alongside them and achieved good grades. I thought I might find some answers here.

However, I now genuinely had to contemplate my career path. I engaged in algorithms because I found them fun and participated in various activities like study groups. I even wrote a retrospective on an algorithm competition held in 2021. Yet even at that time, I sensed that I might not possess the potential to achieve great success in the world of algorithms.

I reached out to someone I had met through algorithms, who had landed a position at a so-called "Nekaraku" company.

"I've come this far because I enjoy algorithms and people. But I feel like I'm not cut out for success in the algorithm domain, though I want to make a good living and aspire to go to that well-known Nekara. What should I do?"

He recommended an activity called Software Maestro (SoMa). He suggested that I apply and if I don't get in, I should try applying to 42 Seoul and SAPI in succession. He also advised that backend development is the most stable path, so I should study backend development in the meantime.

Thus, I reflected on my applications to SoMa in early 2022, crafting my self-introduction. That introduction has become what represents me on my blog today, reflecting my journey at that time.

I am not someone who lives with grand aspirations. I simply followed the light of remarkable people, and I hope to continue living like that. It is an honor to have the opportunity to share this space with you. I often use the nickname 'Witch.'

Current introduction on my blog

Since I consistently engaged with algorithms, I smoothly passed the coding tests. I gathered whatever enthusiasm I had for the interviews and managed to pass. As a result, I was accepted into SoMa's 13th cohort, and throughout 2022, I took my first steps as a backend developer... or so I thought. Here I am as a frontend developer.

Failure?

In SoMa, I assisted with operating a societal band and developing a platform site for communication among its members. In the course of this, I ended up taking on the frontend role simply because I had no clear preference for backend or frontend. Surprisingly, I found it quite enjoyable. On the other hand, while observing backend developers, I tried studying a bit of backend development but did not find it intriguing enough to shift entirely away from frontend.

Thus, I embarked on the path of a frontend developer.

In truth, the time I spent in SoMa was not marked by particularly successful outcomes. I did not communicate much beyond work-related matters with team members, and to this day, we are not in close contact. The lack of significant disagreements looms larger as a failure for me. Though we invested in design outsourcing and created a small website, its deployment quickly came to an end.

However, those experiences prompted me to consider how to avoid repeating such failures in the future. I believe these reflections helped fill in the gaps of knowledge I had been unaware of—what I should have done during the early project stages, the type of individuals I should have sought to work with, and the criteria I could use to identify and engage such individuals.

Moreover, I reflected on the type of team I aspired to build and why, despite a significantly favorable environment provided in the SoMa project, it ended up failing. Gradually, I also arrived at my own conclusions about these matters, reinforcing my values. I gained a loose yet supportive community in SoMa, making it easier to find study partners or collaborators in the future.

Impact of Failure

Interestingly, while I did not gain much from SoMa directly, the derivative benefits were considerable. First, I was able to establish a study trajectory that has continued thus far. Toward the end of my SoMa activities, I had the opportunity to interview with a company among the top tier of "Nekaraku." At that time, I had barely scraped by with design-only pages and had not deeply explored frontend intricacies.

However, during the interview, I faced relentless questions about deeper concepts within JavaScript that I hadn't even considered. After an hour and a half, I was naturally rejected, leading to immense regret. This experience changed my study approach, focusing on establishing a solid foundation that has become the driving force behind the blog posts I write today.

Additionally, I was able to present about my SoMa activities at another school. There, I encountered numerous wonderful individuals with whom I still maintain connections. We occasionally engage in study groups and share insights.

Lastly, throughout the six months of SoMa, I experienced many interpersonal failures, leading me to ponder how I might avoid such setbacks. I devised alternative strategies, which I subsequently applied through various studies and projects. These strategies proved effective, allowing me to carry my lessons forward; even though some of my later activities may have faltered in achieving their original objectives, the people always remained.

Looking back, it seems that the minor failures I faced within SoMa allowed me to gain much more.

2022 Wrap-Up

In 2022, I engaged in various external activities. In SoMa, I not only worked on projects but also built connections with many people, shared meals, and organized study groups. I also worked as an officer in the algorithm club that had once guided me and taught algorithms within a union formed by universities in the Sinchon area. I even made brief presentations at the seminars held regularly in the 'Baekjoon Room.'

Compared to my previous self, I encountered a vastly greater number of people. This led me to solidify the notion that developers, after all, are also human, a profession intertwined with others. Previously, I perceived developer skills and careers as quantifiable. I had thought, "If your skills are 70 and mine are 100, then you're beneath me." As a result, I aimed to become a developer with around a thousand points, seeking to surpass everyone.

Yet, that is not the whole story. While some level of tangible skill does exist, meeting people has shown me that even exceedingly inadequate individuals could be excruciatingly desirable to work with, while those with immense talent might be somewhat off-putting.

I now realize that those individuals in the computer science department whom I found incredibly admirable were not necessarily incredible talents. They too were merely college students passionate about algorithms or ordinary junior developers. What captivated me wasn’t their outstanding skills but their ability to express their love for what they do without hesitation.

I followed those shining words and arrived here, alongside individuals I wished to be with, yet I often forgot this fact in my mind. While I had come to the computer science department to pursue what I wanted to do and meet people I wanted to see, I also harbored the notion of following some elite course to become overwhelmingly skilled. I became overly focused on distant goals.

A student who knew nothing and was returning to mechanical engineering has now become an officer of the computer science department’s club, has taught algorithms, and has become a supporter of several study groups. The wonderful people I walked this path with are right beside me. In truth, titles such as instructor or officer bear no real significance. Those brilliant individuals I once looked up to are now mere companions. I no longer know what distant goals I should chase; they might be unaware of any objectives either, but isn’t it enough that we are together?

Graduation

I graduated in February 2023, with many people attending to congratulate me. Junior peers met with me during my graduation and presented cake and letters. "dart" and "city" are my usernames on Baekjoon, and I typically use the nickname 'Witch' online.

Leaving behind a school I’ve attended for so long feels bittersweet. However, I had already formed lasting connections over the years. They are not people with whom my relationships would end upon graduation. They still talk to me occasionally about problems on Baekjoon. Hence, graduation hasn't significantly altered my life; I continue solving problems, studying JavaScript, journaling, and searching for jobs. Fortuitously, I am now employed and doing well.

Present

I once believed I would become a mechanical engineering professor. Even before that, I had envisioned becoming an economist, and earlier, a judge. I have never thought the journey toward these aspirations would be easy. Yet, my imagination of those struggles was always vague. "There will be challenges, but I will overcome them and achieve my goals" was about as concrete as it got. It felt as if I were the protagonist of a story, navigating crises as mere narrative devices, and I never envisioned that I would be unable to transcend those crises or change due to them.

Not long after, real time, along with its trials, came my way. Good times and bad times coexisted. I don’t believe my hardships were extraordinary. In several instances, I have been quite lucky. Because of this, some crises I faced were relatively easy to navigate.

However, regardless of good or bad, facing events I couldn’t have imagined at all led me down paths I had not recognized as myself. No, how could such a disease exist in this world to cause me such distress! No, how could there be such astonishing individuals that following them felt necessary! After somehow pushing through those challenges, I had become markedly different, regardless of whether the experiences were positive or negative.

Throughout that process, I had held onto the belief that I had clear answers about my future direction. I thought someone would know, that whatever it was would be like a master key to life; I would just need to find it. Those were undoubtedly not the answers, and nobody knows what the true answers may be. Perhaps it's even possible that no definitive answer exists. Yet, in hindsight, the time I spent searching for answers appears to reflect the answers I found.

Now, alongside the people around me who hold similar answers, I dream of proving to the world that our answers are valid.