How one career decision can change your life: Sara’s story

In social media and blogs, we can see lots of different stories when people leave their current life and start from the beginning, they change the place, change careers, change jobs. As a side observer, it seems great, because there is nothing better than people who do everything to be happy. But in real life, most of us probably don’t know anyone who would leave everything just like this, because we have contracts, bills to pay, a stable situation. I didn’t know either, until one day I met my university friend Sara. Her story is so inspiring that I really wanted to share it with the world.

Meet Sara
So, as mentioned before, a few weeks ago, I meet my university friend Sara. She was always the one with the best grades, notes, and always ready for the exam. After graduation, she started working in a sales team in one of those big corporations. It wasn’t her dream job, and she felt unhappy spending more than 8 hours per day calling to different people and trying to sell products or services she even didn’t believe can help them somehow, especially that she wasn’t too convincing and her results were rather bad. It started to be overwhelming for a young girl who had a little bit different vision of her life.

Looking for a change
One day, Sara’s two colleagues got fired. Well, Sara wasn’t the best seller, and she was afraid next time she will also lose her job. She decided to do something about it, not to have this feeling anymore. Also, she has one big dream, she would like to go for a trip to South America. Right now, it was impossible, but the decision about changing her job open a bunch of new doors in Sara’s life. Actually, she started to consider remote jobs. She wanted to find one of those traditional jobs, which will bring money fast. At first, the best idea she had was to check job portals and find out what kind of remote offers she can find and what skills does she need. As a result of the research, Sara knew she could become a recruiter, maybe IT recruiter, as they got better salaries or technical copywriter. Also, graphic designers can work remotely, but what caught her eye, was programming. Although she never was interested in tech too much, she decided to give it a chance. Especially when everyone says programmers have a great situation on the job market.

First choice
At this point, she had to continue the research because different technologies made her confused, and she needed to find out what exactly she has learned to apply for one of those jobs. After going through forums, Facebook groups, and blogs for people interested in programmer career, she thought that learning Java can be the right choice. It was a highly recommended language, so why not try.

She found a Java bootcamp, promising that it’s possible to learn programming in a few months. It seems like it found exactly what she was looking for. As soon as possible, Sara signed for the bootcamp and a few days later went for her first classes, ready for a career change.

When I heard about it, I was really happy that she decided to learn to code, as it was also my life choice, and I was quite sure she will be satisfied, and programming skills let her get a very nice career. So, I really kept my fingers crossed for her, although I knew she may have some difficulties, as it was with me.

In the beginning, she was very excited about the bootcamp, she met some people similar to her, wanted to learn new skills, so it convinced her it was a good choice. Unfortunately, time was passing, and she got more and more confused, she couldn’t understand it at all. That’s why week by week, she stopped to attend the bootcamp, and her determination to learn got very weak. She gave up with Java.

Second try
The idea about learning to code came back to Sara when she returned to the job research. This time she took a look at building websites, she thought that everybody needs a website so maybe that’s a good way. Now, she decided to try learning on her own, she didn’t want to attend the classes anymore. According to the tones of blog posts and forums, she should start from learning HTML and CSS. It wasn’t a programming language yet, but she found out that it will give her the possibility to create first projects for money.

At first, she went to a book store to select some books for beginners. Then she also found some online courses, and she noticed it gives her a lot of fun, different than learning Java. Very satisfied with the interactive method of learning, she spends every free hour on coding projects with the interactive platform. First, she was doing projects step by step with the course. But finally, she started writing the first code on her own computer. She took ready-designed layouts from freebies and tried to code them.

First success
When we met last time, she told me she took the first project from the freelancing portal. Currently, she still works in her previous job until she will start to get more clients from freelancing daily. Although, she already created profiles on most of the freelancing platforms, and she is looking for projects.

She also wants to start learning Javascript, to create more advanced projects, maybe even start using frameworks in some time. For now, she is really happy with the progress she did, and from the possibilities, she got with her new skills.

Besides, she is planning her trip to South America, and as soon as she starts earning reasonable money, she wants to switch to digital nomad life for some time.

Conclusion
Sara decided to change her career, she had a goal to find a remote job, and she managed to learn new skills and get some new opportunities. Even if she is still working in her previous job and need to do her freelance work after hours, she is much more happy, because she knows one day she will quit the current company and become free, earning money on her own. Also, she knows this day will be soon. Although she had a small fail with Java at the beginning, she gave a try to something else, and it worked out.