Sometimes the voice of the impostor syndrome is stronger than the voice of the motivation of our dreams, and when we manage to reverse the roles of these, life becomes surprisingly magical and unexpected, to the point of the birth of stories that would otherwise be impossible.
So that you understand me, first I will give you a little more context and I will tell you how thanks to the need and the sense of responsibility towards me, my family and our future, I decided to shake hands with fear as well as any other feeling or negative attitude I had at that moment and I started walking.
It's time to recommend a good coffee or the drink you prefer to accompany this reading.
2018
I was in an extremely difficult moment of my life at an economic and health level because of the motorcycle accident that I talk to you about in another post, a reason that had taken us in a matter of just over 12 months, progressively to lose almost everything that until this moment we had managed to build with my partner.
It hurts too much when you see that everything you have worked for almost all your life, suddenly falls in a couple of months, it vanishes between your fingers without giving you the opportunity to do too much to avoid it.
After deciding with my partner that it was time to leave the capital city of our country (Bogotá - Colombia), and go looking for a quieter life for us and for our children, thanks to my mother-in-law whom I love very strongly because she is a very special and important person in all my stories, who reached out to us by opening a space in her house, we ended up in a much smaller city with a warm climate with an obviously more limited economic activity than Bogotá tried to resurface against all odds.
2019
I don't want to bore you with everything we have had to suffer and go through as a family to be and be who we are today much stronger and more united than ever.
With a chronic pain wearing out my mind second by second, but with the eagerness and the need to get ahead for me and my family, I had heard of "Studying online" and the name of a couple of platforms such as Platzi, Crehana and Coursera among others...
The part for me funny and incredible begins with an idea that comes to my head from somewhere in the universe:
"What if I convince a company or brand to pay for my subscription to Platzi in exchange for carrying out projects and jobs related to what I'm learning? 🤔
Without fear or sorrow I started looking for that sponsorship and oh surprise that it appeared earlier than I expected, in a matter of days I was registering for the first time on the platform extremely happy and motivated to study and learn everything I could before my subscription ended.
The truth is that I had never studied virtually and this was not so common by then since it was pre-pandemic.
At the beginning of the year and for free, I took the Basic Programming Course taught by the great, irreverent, loved by some and hated by others Freddy Vega, CEO & Co-Founder of Platzi. This course and the way in which Freddy transmits his passion for what he does, was perhaps what, in the middle of my crisis, activated something in my brain that wanted to become what I was seeing in front of the computer at all costs.
After the great idea that would change the course of my life forever, and a beautiful year full of new knowledge, motivations and new goals, the end of my subscription was approaching and my economic situation did not change.
I still lived in my mother-in-law's house with my partner and my children, working with design and advertising things that barely allowed us to survive.
2020
When I thought that stage was over, an email filled my heart with joy again so I didn't understand very well what they were inviting me to from Platzi. A Web Development Bootcamp (terms that by then I had never heard) and that thanks to my performance within the platform during the subscription year, I had earned the opportunity to belong to this pilot program of this great platform.
"Platzi Master is an exclusive program for our best students and that is why we are delighted to inform you that the Admissions Committee has decided to invite you to start this process with us. It is a very important achievement and we are sure that together we will take your career to another level."
After discussing it with some people who very incredulously told me things like: "Platzi is useless", "I had never heard it" and "but virtual will it be that one does learn?", came the question of my wife who looked into my eyes and said: Do you want to do it?
Well, here I was, in a dynamic that I did not understand very well at first, surrounded by people with the same or more desire to learn and eat the world than I do, along with experts in the different areas of software development as mentors such as:
- Stephania Aguilar
- Guillermo Rodas
- Oscar Barajas
- Nicolas Molina
2021
After several stages, individual and group projects, a lot of hard work and hours of code, interviews, technical tests, there I was, on March 10 opening my eyes and preparing for what would be my first day as a Semi Senior UI Web Developer of the largest technology company at the LATAM level, Globant.
Suddenly after 2 years that seemed like maybe a couple of months of how fun and focused I was, I had achieved things that I would never have even imagined that I was capable of doing and much less with a chronic pain that torments me 24 hours a day without rest but that while I am writing code, it seems to disappear almost completely from my body
What a long story!
I know, I tried to tell you the most punctual and important of each stage of this process so you can imagine all the problems and obstacles that I could have had during this journey...
Conclusion
It's not just because it changes my life, nor are they paying me some kind of sponsorship or advertising but Platzi is a great platform to study, when you meet them you realize the great effort and teamwork behind it to improve day by day and offer you the best experience and resources possible in their material for you as a student.
The most incredible and powerful thing is ultimately its community, here you find people willing to learn as much as to teach. It is incredible and utopian the type of people you find here, always motivating others, inviting them not to perish on the road in the same way that they seek to be motivated by others.
Maybe it sounds cliché but in the end, it is not the platform that makes you grow; You are the only one responsible for what happens with your life and Platzi is a great tool to empower you as a person and as a professional regardless of whether you are going to work in the tech industry or if you want to be an independent artist or whatever.
I'm going to stop with this story here. It could be told in a thousand ways and surely I skipped a lot of important data that I will try to touch in future posts. I just hope that this reading helps you to motivate you and realize that no matter how bad your situation seems today, never lose hope for the new day, and that if you make an effort, the end, no matter what it is, will always be worth it.