Off We Goooo, Into The Wild Blue Yonder!

“Wake up everyday, work hard, stay humble and repeat.” - CMSGT Kaleth O. Wright

This project is about me joining the Air Force and fully changing my lifestyle for the years to come. Prior to the military, I’m your average guy that didn’t really have an end goal in sight other than to be successful. I didn’t know what that even meant “Be successful”. I was just going through the motions everyday, going to school at Leeward Community College…I felt stuck in a loop. One day, I saw an advertisement on T.V about the Army and was like “Yeah, I’m gonna go join the Army”. Well, that day, the Army doors were closed but, the Air Force office was open. So, I ended up applying to the Air Force for IT related jobs. Whoo boy, was I in for a wild ride.

The Air Force taught me to be more disciplined, to strive to improve for the greatest version of yourself, and to be open-minded to learn new things. It taught me how to be a good leader and a good follower. What being a good leader to me means to be able to do what you expect your team to do. What being a good follower to me means is being able to execute a task to the best of my abilities as long as it’s a lawful order. The Air Force also taught me how to be a really good team player. We’re all in this uncomfortable environment which is the Air Force where we can’t just get up and go home otherwise we’d go to jail. Before leaving the Air Force, I made sure I was leaving my position in a good place; so that the person that takes over my position won’t be in a fire immediately. I left the Air Force with three important core values: Integrity First, Service Before Self, and Excellence In All We Do. I try to live these core values I learned everyday; key word being try. There are times now that I feel like I’ve grown complacent and comfortable; I know that I can’t stay in that kind of environment. I know that I need to keep pushing; to keep improving even if it’s just 1% better.

How does all this relate to Software Engineering? I feel discipline, an open mind to learning, and striving to do better are important aspects in learning Software Engineering. The topic of Software Engineering is already a daunting thing to think about for someone as myself that has zero experience in the topic. I’m very much eager to learn though. I hope to one day become proficient enough in the topic that I can easily write a simple login script in Powershell or navigate my way through active directory efficiently. Maybe one day, I can design my own database infrastructure and redesign the way patient information in hospitals are stored. I have already accepted my fate of making mistakes; I will absolutely do my best to learn from them. With the core values I’ve learned, I will do my best to ingrain important Software Engineering skills and experience so that I can use that knowledge in relative careers such as Data Science or Cyber Security.