The fear: Everyone is doing more than me!

I am a student, I study software engineering. As a student I spend most of my time studying (a lot more than most of my classmates probably) but still I feel like I am not learning enough. After over 2 years I still feel like a beginner at everything. Of course I have learned a lot, it just never feels like it's enough!

And then I see everyone else in my class. They don't try that hard in school, but some are really good at programming since before and some are very outgoing and nice so there are a lot of people getting programming part time jobs all over.

I was always asking myself how they did it because I am always looking for part time jobs for students in the programming field online but never find anything. Then my friend told me about how one friend did it: networking. Of course. My achilles heel. How will I ever survive this business if I suck at networking? Because I do. Will all my outgoing and talkative friends just get all the nice jobs and I will be left with the scraps?

One of the fears I have is that I wont get a job because I don't have any job experience in software development from during my student time. So if a company gets my resume and the resume from another person in my class who has had a part time job in software engineering, that person is going to seem like the better option. Since they got the job it seems like they are more interested in programming than me right? It also shows perseverance and such. Guh.

People around me are talking about their jobs, their side projects and all that. They go to a lot of hackathons and maybe some events too. Most don't really care about grades, as long as they pass that's fine.

But me, I care about grades, because I am thinking of taking a masters. I stopped going to hackathons because I either feel like I am too busy or too incompetent to go. Sideprojects, I've tried, but they mostly happen during times when I don't have a lot of school work so that's not very often.

Every day I am scared that I am not doing enough. That I just suck and will always suck. Part of it is my own problem, I am shy and meeting new people and keeping up conversations isn't the easiest thing for me. It feels like my own personality is stopping me from doing the things so many of my classmates are doing. Changing ones personality is hard concious effort though, and it's difficult to know where to start.

For what little I can do now is to keep trying, trying to learn more software development, looking for a job, trying to ignore what other people are doing and instead focus on bettering myself. I am not sure I will succeed though, because people are all around me. With every success they share the more of a failure I feel like.

As a developer, where should I live?!

One thing that has been on my mind a lot since deciding that I was going to work as a developer is figuring out where to work. I am actually not super interested in living in a big city, I like being close to nature and at some point in time I would like to be able to buy my own house, it shouldn't be too lonely but I do want an ocean or lake view and some woods around nearby. But some jobs just naturally congregate in big cities, not in small towns. Jobs in the IT field are definitely like this, which put me in quite a rough spot. How can I get the job I want and at the same time the home life I want?

It honestly took me years to figure this out, but I finally have. The answer I've come to is: You have to compromise, because you will not be able to get all of any of these things. In a small town I will have less options as far as jobs go, and in a big city I will probably not get to live in the sort of place I dream of.

Compromise is key. It's a sad reality, but I guess I've finally accepted it after so long. There is always going to be a part of me who wonders if I picked the right career simply because of the fact that I am not looking for a city life. But I do love programming and I do not regret choosing this field of study, so I just have to live with the fact that because I chose it some subsequent decisions, altough seemingly unrelated, have to be based on this one.

So what I've decided to do is focus on 2 towns. One is smaller, the other one a bit bigger but by no means as big as Gothenburg or Stockholm. These towns are strategically placed for me, being in the middle of Sweden and "close" to where my parents live so that I would visit sometimes during weekends. I am not sure the smaller town will have enough jobs, but it it doesn't I can always move to the one which is a big bigger.

These 2 towns are by no means where I planned to end up when I first came back to Sweden to study. I always looked to the south of Sweden; Uppsala, Gothenburg, Lund, Malmö and so on. For a long time since I started living in Gothenburg I thought I might just live there my whole life! That has changed though, as much as I have loved living in Gothenburg, and there are so many IT companies here that I would like to try to work for, I don't think I can stay for more than a few years because it doesn't mix with my idea of how I want my home life. Therefore I have to leave eventually and settle down elsewhere.

My life hasn't always been the easiest or funnest but ever since Gymnasiet it has been consistently pretty great, with ups and downs of course but I managed. What I am trying to say is that I guess I haven't had to compromise a lot in my life, I haven't had to take decisions where choosing one thing means sacrificing another. It's been comfortable, which means I haven't learned or accepted yet that in my future I will have to compromise and sacrifice. No matter what you choose to do, where you choose to live, there will always be bad sides to it. Somehow I never really thought of things in this way before, I am almost 25 years old but I realize I am still young in many ways.

Another reason for taking so long to finally decide where I should live in the future was the feeling of "failure", which is stupid, but I felt like I had to be in one of the big cities: Stockholm, Göteborg, Uppsala, Malmö, or else I had failed as someone who is aiming high. This is very stupid, I am aware, but feelings come up sometimes without us wanting them to, right? It was hard for me to accept that I would not be in any of these cities if I wanted to make some other dreams come true. Work is not everything. Work life balance is important, so you have to live somewhere that can bring you the most happy things.

So, what do I want: A job in IT (as a web developer or possibly in another fun field), a house, lots of nature, nice winters, to be able to visit my family often, and so on...
What I have to sacrifice: Job opportunities, big city fun, ease of traveling, and so on...
It might not seem like a lot, we are really on "first world country problem" level here, but these are the silly kinds of things that keep me up at night, so I am glad I finally have some resolution in where to live, and I am willing to sacrifice for it.