Well, here I am, for another post, now with the second part of my experience in the world of grown-ups. I will be talking about the new people I met, what I thought about them, and the actual work itself.

The team

I was assigned to a team of around twenty people. As I read the list of names, I couldn’t help but wonder how they were gonna be. Are they funny? Helpful? Uptight? All these questions were answered as I attended the daily meetings, and I could definitely tell the different personalities in the team. Some people were more reserved, only talked when absolutely necessary and spoke very quietly, almost whispering. Others were comfortable, very comfortable, actually. Open mic, webcam on, still in pyjamas… absolutely fearless. I could hear their kids screaming, the dogs barking, one of them had a Minecraft image in the webcam background, another was using a Snapchat filter, like… ???

What is going on? I thought this was supposed to be a professional setting!

Overall, I got a good first-impression of the team, and I’m looking forward to meet them personally. Every time I asked for help, people showed themselves to be available. Hopefully soon I’ll get to a level where I can help back.

The work

After the first days of meetings and online courses, I was finally assigned my first task. It’s a relatively simple thing, has no due date, so I still don’t have the deadline pressure, and I can get used to the team’s modus operandi. I read some documentation to understand the program I was gonna work on, and once I had my working environment set up, I grabbed the latest version of the application from the version control system and dug right into it…

* Ring, ring… *

“Hello, who is this? Oh, mrs. Imposter Syndrome? Ah, yes, what an excellent time for you to show up, really convenient… No, no, I am not bothered by your presence at all, what an idea…”

As I started reading the application source code, I became mortified and sinking deeper into my chair. I was on the verge of apologizing to every developer that ever existed for having the nerve to choose this profession. The feeling of dread increased as I read the compiler errors.

However, alongside this sinking feeling of overwhelm, another feeling was rising. It was the excitement of a new challenge. A wall to be climbed. A problem to be tackled. An opportunity for growth. The more I tried to chip away at the task, the more intrigued I was by it. “Oh, strlen() is not defined? I only need to #include then". These easy little fixes might not have made a significant impact, but I got *momentum*, and I got my composure back. I kept changing more and more things to make the code better. At a certain point, it finally started to feel like **my** code, and I wanted to make it as best as I could.

To this date, I have not yet finished my task, not even close to it, but I’m no longer scared by it. I’m confident I will get it done properly, sooner or later.

I’m not a volleyball player, but… “Isn’t ‘defeat’ more like a trial to overcome? Of whether you can stand up and walk again?