Growing up in a family where I followed 100% what my mom told me to do. My intellectual journey was just an endless loop of going to class, going to tutoring, and going home. Tutoring - where I learned the knowledge before they taught in class - gave me the power to understand the concepts more thoroughly. That rewarding system just pushed more and more families to bring the kids to these tutoring classes, believing that this will make their kids smarter, even though since grade 1. Yes, grade 1. I remembered studying from 7 - 4 in school in primary school and then 3 more hours of studying tutoring since 6 years old, which was the bare minimum. I was not an exception - I felt paid off when I sounded “smarter” since I knew the concept beforehand, and I could solve the questions in class much better. The same patterns happened until my senior year in high school - still early morning to late night. Until the moment I needed to apply to study abroad, a question appeared - “What do you want to study?” I blanked out. I decided to do business simply because that was what my mom did.
Business schools usually give students several different opportunities to develop their intellectual journey. I was interested in “analytics” - they called it - among all the emphasis my school offers. Slowly, I realized that Marshall does not have that many resources for such an interest, so I took several courses under Viterbi as a minor in Applied Analytics. Interested in a “Data Analyst” career since the second semester of freshman year, I was all-in to invest my free time self-teaching myself data skills in addition to the courses at school. I still remember the late nights spent making my data portfolio with the hope that these will land me somewhere. I still remember the early mornings when I woke up at 4:30 on Wednesday and Sunday every week for nearly 2 years to study the Data Analytics Career Launchpad hosted in Vietnam through Zoom. After freshman year, sophomore year, and then junior year, I did not even land an internship or any opportunity. I was desperate, questioning myself with tons of questions: What is wrong with this journey? Is it because of my degree title saying business instead of an engineering-related name? No resources, no help, no response from recruiters, that kid who used to be so happy that he found out his passion, started to feel demotivated, if not want to say, disappointed.
People talk about “follow your passion and things will come along.” What a nonsense - I thought. When I was ready to break out of the cycle of following what everyone else does, like when I was in Vietnam, and followed what I love, I received no positive affirmation or signs saying I should proceed. Now, in my senior year, I decided to pivot into a more business-related role, product management, to see if things change. Looking at my peers graduating with a position lined up, I was even more devastated. But what I can do is give myself a chance to try to rebuild everything again.
“What if I failed again?” Then another lesson learned, another chance to rebuild, as long as I am still alive.