Thoughts and Musings

Today after a wonderful fun trip to Wal-Mart with Kent (he slept the whole time, so that was awesome) I sat down with some food and my Book of Mormon. This past week I've been reading Alma 32 over and over because we've had some serious decisions to make. Last week I was officially "offered" a job at a company based in Lehi called SolutionStream. Their recruiter had contacted me and asked if I'd wanted to come in for an interview (apparently I'm "linkedin" with someone who works there, goooo0000OOO "networking"!) and since they are looking for Flash/Flex/Java people he called me up. I went to the interview with the mindset of "I'm just looking" and had a positive experience. A couple interviews and phone calls later they offered me a job. Through lots of discussion with my dad, my wife, and God we decided me continuing my studies at BYU was a better decision.

How does all this relate to the BOM? Well, in Alma 32 it talks about faith, it talks about the poor, and while I'm poor (and will stay that way if I stay in school) I could use a little more faith. I need to have faith in the strong promptings and wonderful things that have happened to me as I have embarked on the path to a PhD and not get distracted by money issues. We have sufficient for our needs and are extremely blessed that Megan doesn't have to work until school starts for me and I drop to 30 hours and even then she only has to work 10/week to keep us living comfortably. Alma 32 spoke to me about enduring to the end, seeing things through to the end and the blessings of not being permitted to enter into the synagogues (PhD programs) because of the coarseness of my apparel (my not exactly stellar academic career).

Apparel is what is on the outside, it is what people see when they look at you, it's your clothes or your resume, or even you blog :). Not getting into a PhD program this time around has "forced" me to be humble, I can get angry over it or I can decide that right now I need to focus on doing my best in school so that next time people are dying to get me into their programs. The road ahead isn't very easy, long hours, lack of financial "success" (for the moment) and there is still the chance I won't get into a PhD program. That is where the faith comes in. I have to have faith that I can follow this dream and see it to the end.

To quote Steve Jobs "People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true. And the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard. And you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up, you know, being “successful” in the eyes of society and the ones that didn’t, oftentimes, it’s the ones [who] were successful loved what they did so they could persevere, you know, when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it quit because they’re sane, right? Who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it?"

ps I found out that Steve and I supposedly have the same personality type, which is probably why I can't stand him.

As part of the path to the decision to continue school my dad and I talked about branding. For the past 3 years I've had to fight to be recognized as a linguist (because my major for my undergrad was English Language). In the CS world I have to fight to be recognized as competent CS guy. When people look at me the have no idea who I am, I'm a really hard person to size up in a glance and when it comes to resume's / job interviews that isn't a positive. As the GM for SolutionStream said to me "I am glad in this instance the guy sitting in front of me is not the guy I see on this resume". Part of the equation is that it is really hard for me to try to make myself well defined because I think that all the parts of me are important. Anyway, I need to actually be in a career with the "credentials" that people are going to recognize so that all my "diverse" experiences outside of my core are a positive addition to my skill set and arn't confusing to the potential employer. I want people to see the nice clearly defined wrapper on my box so when they are browsing the proverbial shelves they find me in the section they expect and that when they pick me up THEN they will see all the other extra awesomeness I contain. I have a hope and some faith that I've made the right decision and only time will tell. I love my wife and how supportive she's been through this whole experience, it takes a special woman to say "I want us to be poor now because I want you to be happy now and into the future". Double thumbs up for awesome wives.

Ross