I was looking for a Nintendo 64 controller on craigslist and found a misplaced ad for teaching English in China.
Completely changed the course of my life, I've been traveling ever since.
I locked my keys in my car and asked the locksmith if he liked the work. He put in a word for me at his shop and I had a job there 3 months later.
Went from washing dishes to being the hero when people lock their keys in their car while they're out drinking.
Ha, that's great!
Lockpicking must be a sight more rewarding and exciting! Congratulations!
Definitely so, with a complete host of its own problems though.
Turns out, work is work. I like it when work lets me learn new things and meet new people though, and this is definitely the place to be for that!
work isss work.
still, I'm glad to hear you're in a more dynamic situation than before, I vastly prefer some excitement and novelty to break up the work day.
have you ever met a lock that defeated your efforts?
Oh all the time! Well, less 'defeated' and more 'not willing to waste time'. I wouldn't consider myself a master lockpick by any means. But picking a lock is only one way to get into a car or house. What really helps is the ability to problem solve and explore alternate routes.
I still usually start with picking, just so I can practice with the feel of a lock. But if it takes too long I explore other avenues. My training is important, but not moreso than doing the service I'm getting paid for.
I work with a guy that's a crazy good lockpicker. He can do jobs with just a tension tool and pick that it would take most of us here an assisted tool to get. Of course, his insistence on doing it the hard way can lose him time - but then save him time in instances where the only way to finish the job is the hard way.
It's a constant give and take between efficiency and practice when on the job. Quite frankly, I don't practice at home nearly as much as I should.
Though, I haven't failed to do a job in a long, long while. Perhaps I simply have imposter syndrome :P
got it, always gotta keep efficiency in mind. That problem-solving sounds like a lot of fun. I helped a guy get into his truck he left his keys in last year, and we ended up using a wire and bending the truck door just enough to unlock the doors from inside.
i like the idea of buying simple padlocks just to practice picking myself, a friend and I did that in college as a hobby but i haven't got back into it yet.
You sound actual to me, no imposter detected!
Your description of getting into the truck is not far off from what we do, albeit we use an airbag to crack the door as to avoid damage alongside a rubber-tipped rigid tool to activate the lock.
And it's absolutely fun to practice! I think when you start doing it for a job, it becomes less fun though.
"when you start doing it for a job, it becomes less fun"
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.
Somewhat related - I love teaching, like every part of it, but I still had to be real careful about getting spoiled and complaining about the parts of the job less fun than others. Many teachers I knew got to the point where they spent more time complaining about their jobs or than they spent teaching per week. I think for a lot of English teachers, our life improvements were so drastic and sudden that anything remotely irritating or troublesome, even commonplace work occurrences, ballooned in our minds to tragedies since the rest of our lives had become so easy. If we had still had our old jobs, where we were struggling or overworked, those "tragedies" would have been minor nuisances at most.
All that to say I agree that anything becomes less fun after it becomes a job, and I would have to practice awareness to make sure I didn't spiral when I got even momentarily tired of dealing with parents or creating a class schedule.
You sound like you have a good perspective on your work, though.
That complaining issue may be prevalent in all careers like that. I had a coworker that would get so angry over issues at work that it would affect his personal life.
Things aren't perfect at this shop, but I'm learning skills that will make me useful worldwide. And I try to think about that on the days where I'm beating my head against a while trying to program a car key while the customer asks "you think it's gonna work?" every 10 minutes.
haha, those outsider questions are always so funny to hear.
like no matter what job you do, people always have two or three questions that would never be asked by anyone familiar with the profession even for a day, but every single person who has never been a _______ feels compelled to ask.
That's a really good point about your developing skill set too, locksmith seems to be one of those future-proof jobs, knock on wood.
I hadn't thought about that, but I'm glad you brought it up.
I was in school for electrical engineering and took a single C course in the second year. Absolutely fell in love with the idea of programming, dropped out of university and switched to a college programming course. Been a programmer for 8 years this may.
Ah, very cool, congrats!
Do most programmers focus on one or two languages, whatever is relevant to their job or are you supposed to learn as many as possible?
What is the driving force behind programmers learning different languages?
Good question! For me the language isn't too important, kinda like with normal languages, it's all about the concepts being conveyed. With programming those concepts are, at a basic level; variables, conditions, lists, loops, objects, and functions. All (decent) languages with have the ability to convey these concepts one way or another, so it's just typically just comes down to syntax when learning a new language.
Obviously there are some exceptions where old or niche languages don't support something. But typically once you know 'programming' the language doesn't matter too much. For me, I use a few different languages depending on what I'm working on. Front-end web stuff; Javascript. Server side logic; nodejs and groovy. Database; SQL.
The driving force behind learning new languages (again for me) has been either for work because that's what is in use and I need to modify existing code, or because I've seen the language in use somewhere else and want to try it out.
Hope some of that answered your question :)
I see, yes, that's an extremely helpful answer.
Knowing that the programming functions themselves are fairly universal under the layer of syntax that briefly broadly defines a programming language is clarifies my understanding of programming as a whole.
now it seems less daunting to choose a first language to learn.
I assume you travelled to China due to that ad. What other places have your travels taken you.
What, also, were the requirements for the job? Were you certified to teach English already, or did they really just need a native speaker?
I did start teaching in China through that ad without any certifications or experience, which is fairly common.
A lot of countries, China included, just require a native or fluent English speaker for a teaching job.
I've been to about 30 countries so far; most of Asia, western Europe, india, morocco, I'm in Panama right now.