About Me — Büşra Yıldız Kocabaş
I’m Büşra, 27 years old, and I’m from Turkey 🇹🇷. While I’m not confident that I know myself completely, in this writing, I want to talk about myself and give you a glimpse of the person behind my future articles.
My family was born and raised in Ordu, a city on the Black Sea coast in northern Turkey, and moved to Istanbul in their youth. Thus, I was born and grew up in Istanbul, a city I love dearly. I have a younger brother who is three years younger than me.
I completed my primary and secondary education in Istanbul. During these years, I must say I didn’t have many opportunities to explore myself outside of school. Our education system doesn’t support and provide many chances to develop ourselves in sports and arts. Nevertheless, I have always loved reading and expressing my thoughts through writing.
For my university education, I studied at Trakya University in Edirne, a city on Turkey’s border with Bulgaria and Greece, for four years. Although it was a field that never crossed my mind in high school, I studied Computer Engineering. Despite Edirne being a small city, it significantly contributed to my self-discovery and development. I made wonderful friendships, got acquainted with Balkan culture, improved my English through the courses I attended, tried playing the violin, exercised regularly for the first time in my life, expanded my network through communities and organizations, and made my first international trip to Silicon Valley, California, USA, with an support of Google. Although I was there for only about a week, I can say that I came back a completely different person.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to discover the benefits of traveling and experiencing different cultures. 🗺️✈️🌎
After graduating from university, I returned to Istanbul to live with my family and worked as a software engineer in Istanbul for about 1.5 years.
Later, (I call this a twist of fate) I moved to Italy to pursue my Master’s degree. Although I had initially thought I would never do this job after graduating from my bachelor’s program, I fell in love with my profession and even pursued a master’s degree in it. I learned AI and ML as well. This period coincided with the pandemic, so it wasn’t as eventful as you might imagine. However, I still made a few but valuable friends. I had a short-term opportunity to work part-time in my field at an Italian company. I learned Italian at a very basic level, visited many cities and museums, became fascinated with sculpture art, saw world-famous artworks, learned to interpret and understand these works better, tasted incredibly delicious food 🍕, enjoyed exquisite wines and various cheeses, and occasionally relieved the stress of my studies with aperitivo. I attended the Venice festival and visited many cities besides Padova (Venice, Verona, Treviso, Rome, Florence, Pisa). 🇮🇹 🩵
I graduated, then married the love of my life. ❤️ My husband was already living in Berlin 🇩🇪. While waiting for the family reunification process, I applied for hundreds of jobs 👩🏻💻. The family reunification process was concluded in March 2024, and I moved to Berlin. I hadn’t found a job yet, but at least we were together, and it was psychologically less challenging. Three months later, I found a job that truly suited my heart 🧿, and now I am very happy with my job. Although I still have many goals and dreams, I havle beautiful memories and significant achievements. I used to struggle with celebrating myself in the past, but I have improved in this regard and continue to do so. I realized the importance of self-compassion after experiencing a severe depression. It was a tough lesson for me. I recommend everyone to reflect on this topic a bit.
While it may seem like I have sorted out many things in my life, I want to mention that there have been many sacrifices in the background of the story.
Everything in life comes with its pros and cons. Therefore, having the primary goal of being better than the person you were yesterday is always healthier.🌿
I’m Büşra, and this was my story. 😊
