Information Technologist

After school I went back to Budapest. I tired to find a job in the capital city with extensive knowledge on horses. I did not speak any languages but Hungarian and my diploma only proved that I was capable to manage a farm. Even this knowledge existed only in theory as I did not actually owned a farm. What about my famous thesis? Well, nobody really cared about environment protection on job market.

After 6 months of constant looking I was hired by an affiliate of the Agricultural Ministry, the National Institute for Agricultural Quality Control as a Livestock breeding information specialist with an exceptionally low salary. Of course it was about right that time: my knowledge about computers included only one thing: how to push the big round button on a the big gray box hoping that something would happen.
My boss was aware about that I was not really a genius with computers, so he sent me to work for an associate IT company for a few months with the hope that I would pick up some knowledge there.
At the IT company they quickly recognized that there is a big gap to fill in my head and of course nobody had any time to teach me. So they chose the easiest way to get rid off me: they sent me to work with the data entry team, where ladies needed to put numbers, billions of numbers into the computers all day, all week and for long-long years. I was slow and not punctual enough and even worse, I started to feel the fear that this would be the job to do forever and there would be no way out of it for me... It was scary and terribly boring. Very soon I started to visit the programmers in the other rooms and beg them to teach me programming. They were laughing at me of course but finally one of them gave in and half-seriously, half-jokingly he told me that if I manage to fully install a computer by myself and add the the programming software, then he would teach me. Now this was a big challenge. It took me weeks and loads of questions. I drove crazy a few people there as it is pretty difficult to explain how a computer works if the other party has no clue about anything. Now it was back in '98. Way before Windows was able to handle everything by itself and I was installing NT which was not the easiest operational system to manage anyway.
By the time the computer was up and running, my time with the IT company finished and I needed to go back to my original position. However, I already had a pretty nice basic about computers and I also got a very good friends ready to answer for millions of questions I had later on.
In my position I found myself running among computers, trying to solve little problems, like wrongly working programs (mostly user errors), or smoking monitors (pull the plug!), or why is that internet stopped working, etc.
It took me 2 years when I heard that the Institute actually have an own IT department, who was responsible for the kind of job I did every single day. Around this time I decided, that this company is not the one where I would like to grow old... and started to think about my future again.

How not to become a professional horse trainer?

I was born in Budapest, Hungary. I started to ride horses when I was about 9 years old and by the time I was 10 I was pretty sure that I want to do nothing else but ride horses in my entire life. Therefore I went to learn Agriculture to the University of Szeged. During the collage years I was training the horses of the school which gave me great freedom as long as I passed my exams and the horses were sold. It was a great life. It hardly bothered me that I was from the capital city, we had no lands, no money and I was not really interested in Farming economy. I just wanted to ride horses. I passed my exams with flying colors and simultaneously I finished my horse riding instructor exam in University of Pecs sport faculty. I also finished a number of judge exams and even a trail riding exam.

It was that trail riding exam which opened my eyes. We students set together to chit-chat every night. It was a very interesting group. There were people from different part of the country, they were from different age groups and with different education level. So when I started to repeat again that I would like to do nothing else in life but ride horses, one of the guys asked: oh really? And would you like to ride your own horse? I said yes, of course this is my main goal. Then he said: Ok, then you have two ways to go.

Option one: you work somewhere with horses, get a very low salary and you will rarely get a day off. You will buy a horse but you will never get money enough to be safe with your horse. You will move from barn to barn and life will just not get easier except if you get lucky and marry to a reach guy or you move to an other country and you will show such an exceptional talent...

Option two: you forget horses for the coming 10 years. You work your ass off in a profession which has not much to do with horses but you can earn enough money to buy a horse after 10 years and you will even have time to ride it. 

Now which option sounds better? Because I do not see any other possibilities...
Ooops... I was hurt badly. My dreams were kind of smashed. However, this conversation made me think about my future.

I went back to the agrarian university to pass my finals and write my thesis. I was thinking hard. After a while I decided to choose option two. I wanted to have a safe, non-challenging life.
As a start I chose my thesis to avoid anything even coming close to horses or farming. I found a tiny subject in the mini Ecology encyclopedia: Environment psychology. It was a broad unknown subject with no literature that time. Therefore I could let my fantasy fly, I started to read a big bunch of books and on the basis of my reading I wrote my thesis with the hope that the subject will be accepted by the school even if it has nothing to do with growth hormones. I got lucky. It was not just accepted but it was the best thesis of the year. A year later my subject got it's own faculty in the Education and Psychology University of Budapest (ELTE). 

My thesis was the first thing I chose to lean away from my original path. And this is how I did not become a professional horse trainer.

Is it really so difficult to change your carrier?

No, it is not easy but not impassible either.

I always envy people whose life goes smoothly all the way till death. You know... those who were born in safe families, got good educations, met with the right partner early, started their life in a certain path and they never ever needed to change. They stayed exactly in the same profession and preferably with the same company all in their life.

My life seems exactly the opposite and it is OK with me. :) So let me give you hope and a little inspiration. 

Once upon a time I asked an old friend of mine if he believes in reincarnation? He answered yes and the added: but not in the usual way. So I asked him back what does he mean? And he said: what if Buddha's words are misunderstood? What if he meant reincarnation not between lives but during a single person's one life time? People can change so dramatically. One day they ride horses, then they repair computers then they become SAP consultants, then they became full time mothers then they learn how to analyse stock market. Or they move between countries, trying to find their way in different cultures. So many different aspects in one life time. Why do we need more then one life for reincarnation?

I was maybe 20 when we had this conversation. The idea is so interesting, that it never left me since.

And yes, my life is like different incarnations.