Meet Nina, a young woman from Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Nina had a dream to work with computers but it took years to finally get her dream job. She went through challenges and hard times but her rare determination led her to success. Here is Nina's story. Enjoy...
The hometown
Nina comes from Krasnoyarsk, an industrial city in Siberia, where she grew up and studied at school. Krasnoyarsk is a quite polluted city because of its geographical location and multiple factories inside the city. People often experience the "black sky" effect because of the polluted air, causing coughs and more severe illnesses.
At school, Nina didn't enjoy regular subjects, so she skipped classes from time to time. Her dream was always to become a programmer but she thought she was not clever enough because she had average marks at Maths and it seemed like Nina's teachers just took pity on her.
After college, she decided to give Maths another try and take the central government test which was normally used for university admission. Unfortunately, the results were not sufficient for a university. Disappointed, Nina thought it's not for her and tried to forget about her dream.
Back to the dream
What always bothered Nina in her hometown was the terrible ecological conditions, so after trying herself at a couple of random jobs and saving some money, Nina packed her bags and jumped on a plane to the south of the country with no return ticket.
She settled down in a small town by the Black Sea and found a travel agent job just to make a living. Nina worked there until the point when one day she accidentally met a local computer school founder who invited Nina to teach children programming. It's where the dots began to connect.
Teaching at the school was not a piece of cake. Many groups of pupils of different ages all demanded a custom approach. Nina worked 12 hours a day. The good part was that the job helped her develop programming skills and choose a future path. She decided to become an ethical hacker, so she enrolled for a Cyber Security course at a university and took extra Python programming courses online.
The pandemic
Nina used to combine work and study but the pandemic made her quit her teaching job. As many of us in the beginning of the pandemic, she didn't know what to do next. But it didn't last very long because Nina knew exactly what she loved. She found a remote job at a big data centre in Moscow, then switched to a local software development company. Unfortunately, the small local company couldn't let her progress as she wanted, so she decided to move on and find a new job.
The bright future ahead
Quite soon, Nina's determination led her to a really great job in the area of Cyber Security which was directly related to Nina's major at the university. While working at the new company, she started learning AI and very recently quantum computing with the strong belief that it's the future of computing.
Now Nina has an interesting job and beloved study. In a year, Nina plans to graduate from the university with the highest possible results and move to Canada. She aims high and she works hard, so we think she totally deserves it and wish her the best of luck!
If Nina's story resonates with you, feel free to connect with her on Linkedin.