Comment by saturn8601
1 day ago
How do you slog through something you truly hate?
More than a decade ago I was hired as an intern at Colgate-Palmolive as a software developer. Turns out they were(are?) one of the largest SAP deployments in the US. The entire company revolved around SAP. Due to lack of college graduates knowing SAP, they took great pains to treat me extremely well and train me (a CS major) in ABAP using SAP Netweaver.
My project was more ambitious than the rest of the group because I had enough courage and bravado to be assigned a project like that. In fact I made it a point to be 'brave' and make myself look really good in front of the upper level managers. I tried to know everyones name, even in other departments and to be super polite and humble around any sort of manager there. When I finally got some tasks to do, I was so miserable that I finished multiple days without getting anything done. I felt so depressed thinking that I slogged through four years of CS for this?
In the end I managed to finish last in the cohort and Colgate took the rare(at the time)decision to not extend me a full time offer. I felt like a complete failure because I didn't put in 100% and I felt like I let my mentor down.
At the same time I know that I truly hated it. To this day seeing pictures of SAP GUI gives me anxiety and makes my stomach turn. How do you overcome something like that and push on? It does not always seem like a sure thing. I sometimes think what if I had pushed through and gotten the offer? I'd probably still be at Colgate like my mentor was.
With the benefit of hindsight I have learned to be super appreciative and thankful for them treating me so well but im glad circumstances led me to not ending up there. But really who knows if it would have been better in the long run? Whenever I see Colgate it actually evokes positive memories of that time. But the biggest thing I learned was to not bite off more than you can chew and if you don't truly love what you are doing there is another path out there.
"How do you slog through something you truly hate?" - I don't.
When signals that a role is not aligned with my needs start cropping up, I begin searching for a new role passively, and as the situation develops I speed up my search.
"I felt like a complete failure because I didn't put in 100% and I felt like I let my mentor down" - to thine own self be true. I have failed to put in 100% at some jobs, and sometimes i regret it more than others. I have narratives that legitimize my laziness or lack of commitment based on some previous slight from the company, or a missed promise on their part, but I hold myself accountable.
"How do you overcome something like that and push on? It does not always seem like a sure thing" Resilience is a wildly varying trait of folks, and depends on your emotional and mental state. "First world problems" are a great example, one when is socialized at a certain comfort level, missing that causes distress. Some working conditions are truly untenable, in which case do what you have to do, but otherwise do the best with the situation you're given.