Leaving the comfort zone
Every year we are curious to see how our students find their way to CODE. Stefanie Keichel is a #fourthdimension student studying Software Engineering at CODE. This is her journey.
When I think about my education and career, everything came together as planned: I finished high school and started to study hard to get a Master of Science degree. I studied BSc Physics and MSc Physics of the Earth and Atmosphere, hoping that after I graduate, I’ll get a great job, and that’s it! THE END of a story!
Slowly, I started to ask myself: is this how the rest of my life supposed to be? Meeting the same people every day, using the same way to go to the office, go to the same bakery every morning, and dealing with more or less the same problems at work? Was this the phase in my life where I was supposed to go to brunch every Sunday, complain over my job and enjoy life solely during that 21 days of my annual vacation?
Well, I have to admit I tried this “lifestyle” for a few months. And guess what? It didn’t work out.
I needed something meaningful that was out of my reach, and I still had this constant hunger to do something more fulfilling in my life. A few months later, I started the day with my jogging routine during one of those typical days. I decided to listen to a podcast by Frank Thelen that I newly discovered. Scrolling through the episodes, I chose the episode that looked the most promising.
And there it was — a podcast episode with Thomas Bachem talking to Frank Thelen about a university he had founded. One hour later, after listening and jogging, I was fully convinced that all the stars aligned for me at this point. That was the opportunity I had been waiting for.
The concept sounded so unique that the first thing I did when I got home was to gather more information. Even before I went to bed that same day, I applied to study at CODE. Now, two months later, I stand in my kitchen, my computer is in front of me, and I’m talking to Manuel Dolderer, the president and a co-founder of CODE. We are having a Zoom meeting while cooking a curry together.
My story is about leaving the comfort zone and taking a leap of faith and taking that chance and maybe doing something meaningful in my life.
There is a quote by Steve Jobs that I love: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
