Mental Preparation

In just 4 short days I have the fortunate opportunity to start the first day of the rest of my life.

To give you a little background. I am a 44 year old mother of two who has been dreaming about application development management now for several years. In 2002 I was an Active Server Pages (ASP) developer for a local company out of Grandville, Michigan. In 2004, after the infamous .com bust, I found myself working for a local retailer in the technology department selling computers. Don’t get me wrong, I liked my job at Office Depot. At the time they were a very good company to work for and I felt proud to be part of their team. After 5 years of service with Office Depot and working my way up to a department manager position, I found myself on the losing end of a separation letter due to corporate downsizing. Up until I had reached that point I had thought of going back to school to obtain a degree in Information Systems Global Project Management. My dream came true that week I left Office Depot. Within days I was enrolled into Davenport University, located in Grand Rapids, MI.

Here we are just a little over 2 ½ years later and my life is about to change forever. I managed to land an Internship with Terryberry. I am extremely excited about this internship because Terryberry is an employee recognition company who focuses on helping corporations reward their employees for their efforts. I am a very big advocate of employee recognition, especially in times like this where workers are feeling so unappreciated or unneeded due to corporate cuts. This company seemingly had the same goals and values that I have and it feels like I am going to be a great fit.

Of course I will be working with much newer technologies at Terryberry. Most of which I have been able to keep up on through the years in my spare time. The most challenging with be C#. Terryberry focuses on Microsoft core technologies such as ASP.Net, VB.Net and C#.  C# of course the only language they work with that I have very little experience in. I am going to pick up a c# book today so that I have it as a reference.

Hopefully I will be able to advance with Terryberry. They seem to be very interested in my future goals as a project manager. This of course being the number one reason I chose them. I am taking this internship as a course credit with Davenport University. I think the timing of this project could not have come at a better time in accordance with the other classes I have. They all seem to be working well together.

I have a lot of tasks to complete today to get ready for this internship. Of course the most important task on my list is mental preparation. I believe to succeed in my field I will need to think like a professional developer. I will need to move past my former issues of self-inadequacies and remind myself how far I have come. I need to remind myself that this field is no longer a field dedicated to young men who are very shy and withdrawn. There is room for someone like myself, an older female, with an outgoing personality and tremendous potential for creativity. This is my time to shine and that is exactly what I will do.