Milestones… A Record of August 2025 | by Lia | Sep, 2025
First Efforts
I have carried a problem with me since I was very young. It began with my family — something beyond my control — yet it has followed me my entire life. It brought not only emotional struggles but also financial hardship. For years I survived day by day, patching up problems as they appeared, just to keep going. At the end of last year and the beginning of this one, however, everything seemed to collapse at once. For the first time, I also ran into some legal issues — not serious, but still something I had never faced before.
When I was younger, I often felt anger, resentment, and depression. But at some point, my heart grew strangely calm. I thought I had become strong through hardship, so even with the legal trouble, I told myself, “Somehow life will just keep going.”
But during that process, there came a moment when it felt as if my values and the way I saw life were being shaken at the core. I had long believed that I was “okay.” I thought I had grown resilient. Yet facing legal problems made me ask myself: what kind of person am I in this world, and what meaning does my life really carry?
After high school, I hid away from the world. Each month I handled whatever crisis exploded in front of me, and I managed to survive because I could work from home. It was easier not to be seen. I convinced myself I was fine with little, fine with being overlooked, fine with being treated unfairly. But the truth is, at least until then, I believed I was fine.
This legal trouble forced me to confront that reality. For a time I fell into fear and despair, feeling useless and I was terrified of the thought that as my mother grew older, one day I would be left alone. When that storm passed, an even heavier fear followed: thoughts of my future self — at forty, fifty, sixty. I imagined a life even more miserable than now, and it felt so real it was like looking at tomorrow.
For the first time, I admitted to myself that I was not okay. Living in poverty, solving problems month by month, hiding away from society, letting my behavior become strange because of isolation — none of it was truly fine. I realized that the way I had been living was not resilience, but denial. If I stayed on this path, I would only sink deeper into despair with age.
I did not know where to turn. The job I have now has shown its limits after ten years. That is why I decided to pursue a new career through Computer Science at UoPeople. I leaned heavily on ChatGPT — it makes mistakes, but it was the only place I could ask everything, from the smallest steps to the biggest life questions.
I have always lacked willpower. But whenever I tried to take a break, the fear of my future came rushing back, and it was so strong that I could not rest. So I kept studying all day. In August, that fear drove me to achieve more than I thought possible.
I completed my first term at UoPeople with a 4.0 GPA. I earned the PCEP and PCAP certificates. With ChatGPT’s help, I finished two projects and learned to understand how the code runs. I also reached Course 2 of the Google Data Analytics Certificate, and in that process, I realized I had chosen the wrong direction, so I adjusted my path. Alongside all this, I worked a little, dealt with some legal matters, and yet — because of the constant fear of the future — I managed to accomplish these within a month. The achievements themselves are modest — mainly certificates without real skills behind them. Yet for me, someone who had long been lazy and weak-willed, they represent a meaningful change
I still don’t have clear answers for my life, but August 2025 was the month I finally began making real efforts. I want to leave this record here, as a reminder of that beginning.
