It has been awhile, hasn't it?

So much has happened since 2010 - there have been plenty of changes.

For one, I graduated San Francisco State University. 

For another, I interned and then got a position in a start-up company (so new that the website is still under construction). 

In this blog page, let me just go over what has transpired since my last update:

• Graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Information Systems
• Graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in eCommerce
• Quit a comfortable, decent-paying job to pursue an internship
• Went into an internship at a start-up
• Got hired by start-up

Other people have been quite supportive over my decisions, due to several factors:

• While I did get a fair pay, I wasn't happy
• I noticed that my past job festered unhappy coworkers - they had decent pay but weren't quite happy with themselves or their coworkers. It was a bit depressing
• I didn't want to live a life filled with "what ifs"
• I desired to have a position where I learned new things almost every day and utilized the skills that I acquired whilst in college

After reading that, you can understand the reasons.  However, here are the post-decision...not-quite-regret-but-something-eerily-like-it

• Need to change and learn how to "live within means"

Not really a list, but it's enough to make someone pause and consider.  If you're going to make a transition, this one is a big factor that you need to consider.  This one reason has made a big impact in my life, and it's something that you really need to prepare yourself for.  I assumed that I could last long, but you never know how much you should save up before making that change.

Yes, I had actually saved up money before planning the transition from my job whilst in college to my internship.  I had assumed that a savings of $5,000 for a 6-month to a year-long internship would be long enough before I "got hired".  Yeah, well... that didn't work out as well as I thought.

My thanks that I have survived as long as I have - even if it is barely - is to the whole "living with your parents" thing.  I still have to pay off bills, and a car, and car insurance, and health insurance (once I left my job for the internship, I had to get a personal health insurance), and the list goes on and on.  However, parents... they help a great deal.  My mom, especially, since she's the one who throws me a bone almost every week on getting me some food to last the week, and sorting out my bills.

My advice for new grads or others similar to my position:

• Save up a whole lotta money unless you don't have a lot of debt 
• Make sure you have supportive people around you that you can rely on
• Learn to live within your means (and try to avoid using credit cards or else your bills will skyrocket...)

Despite having graduated, and receiving a position at the start-up, the pay is still severely lacking.

If someone asks me whether I would change my mind if I could do it over again, I would still stand my idea of taking the harder path.  Without taking that step, I wouldn't have learned as much as I did. I wouldn't have learned to appreciate family as much as I have.  I wouldn't have learned the value of money.

And I certainly wouldn't have known the vast difference between what you learn in school and what you learn in the real world.  I knew that what we had learned in class wouldn't be quite as applicable when utilizing it in a job setting.

However, when you actually come across that situation it's very humbling. 

Just recently, in my job, my boss had a "pop quiz" for me. He wants me to start learning ERDs (Entity-relationship Diagrams).  I had to tell him that I haven't learned much from my class (if you had the teacher that I did... you would certainly know why).  In the 30 minute he gave me, I was a wreck. The course I took didn't really apply ERDs in a situation where we could utilize this in the real world - outside of a classroom setting. Everything was by the book. 


There I was, in front of a computer, trying to learn how to use the mySQL Workbench's EER.  I had gotten as far as making tables... and then got stopped because I couldn't figure out why the many-to-many relationship wasn't working like it should. 

So here's another advice:  get an internship / entry-level position as early as you can in your college career. 

This way, you can really get a leg up on the competition.  No matter how minor you think you are learning, at least you're learning something that could be useful to you.