Days in the Life of Mo

You know what no one warned me about when I made the leap from honours student to full-time dev girl?

Everything.

If you’re expecting a polished success story with a straight line from lecture halls to coffee-fueled coding sessions; bless your sweet, naive soul. The truth? Transitioning from academia to industry is like thinking you’re getting a cute cat and ending up with a feral raccoon in your lounge. Still cute… but now it bites.

The “Graduate” Fantasy

Let me paint the picture. You’re fresh out of university with a newly printed degree and the kind of academic ego only 20-page literature reviews can build. You’ve coded the same algorithms ten different ways. You’ve nailed coursework. You’ve debugged until 2am. You feel ready.

Then comes your first real job.

Suddenly, no one’s handing you a spec doc that tells you exactly what to do. You’re neck-deep in legacy code with comments like // do not delete or everything breaks. You’re staring at variables named x, xx, and xxx like you’re trying to solve a cryptic crossword from the 1800s.

They didn’t tell us this part.

Academia Teaches Theory. Industry Teaches Reality.

In university, we were taught clean architecture, documentation, unit testing, and design patterns. But out here in the wild? That’s all nice in theory. In practice, you’re more likely to find Frankenstein code stitched together by five different developers over a decade. No Git history. No documentation. Just vibes.

As a student, I was a perfectionist. I’d rather submit late than submit messy. As a dev? You ship. You iterate. You patch. You survive.

The Emotional Pivot

No one tells you how lonely it can feel when imposter syndrome hits mid-sprint. Or how weirdly personal it gets when your pull request is rejected with a “this isn’t optimal.” Like ouch, that’s my soul you just didn’t merge.

But the beauty is in the pivot. You learn to be okay with “good enough.” You learn to communicate better. You learn to ask for help, a lot. You learn that debugging isn’t a punishment, it’s an extreme sport.

The Wins Are Quiet but Real

No one claps when you finally fix a bug that’s haunted the app for months. But you feel it. That little rush of “I did this.” Your first production deploy. Your first successful API integration. Your first time helping someone else on the team.

Those wins aren’t loud. But they stack up.

Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me

• You won’t remember everything you learned in class, and that’s okay. What matters is knowing how to learn fast.
• Mentorship is gold. If you find a senior (like my very own Grinch, Dan) who explains things without making you feel stupid, hold onto them tighter than a deadline.
• Your degree gets you in the room. Your curiosity keeps you in it.
• Google is your friend. Stack Overflow is your bestie. ChatGPT is your emotional support AI.

And lastly, there’s no right way to be a developer. There’s just your way. Your pace. Your path.

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So, Why Am I Telling You This?

Because I wish someone had told me.

I wish someone had been honest about the growing pains and the quiet triumphs. The late nights and the lightbulb moments. The bugs that break you and the fixes that rebuild you.

If you’re a student stepping into the dev world, or a junior dev crying into their coffee, this is your sign that you’re doing just fine. Keep going.

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