Salaam..
This is my first semester being involved in a full-scale IT project. And it had to be a multi-national company(we vollunteered. it was worth it). Essentially the project is about implementing an inter-departmental service repository which solves many redundancy and time issues in the company. The system managed to automate what used to take 3-4 months to complete, into mere seconds.
It was(and is) a great experience working on a real-life project. It gave me a glimpse of what is to come in the future. It was great. i loved it. But i was burned out. I spent my days going to class and joining meetings, and my nights doing assignments and coding. I barely had time for myself. I guess now I know what it's like to be my dad. He got out to work at 6am, came back home at 12; only to rest his head for a few hours.
I can reflect on the passion that he must've had with his work and I can feel the pressure that he must've felt just trying to deliver successful results. I, too, felt committed with the project and at a point, became attached to it. I was never a good coder, so I really wanted to prove a point, this time. Alhamdulillah, it went great and the client is very much happy with the product (although it's still incomplete at this point.).
The project in its entirety gave me a new perspective; a glimpse of the challenges that I will be facing in my future career. More importantly, it gave me an understanding of how hard it will be to balance social life, family life, D&T, as well as self-development. It's daunting to forecast what's to come but what's important now is for me to live in the present, and to adapt to the challenges to come. You know what they say, as the going gets tough, the tough gets going.



