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How did you know your options in life, 200-250?

May 12, 202127 min read

from How do you know what your life choices are? How did you know your options in life, 200-250?

yasu__j: Moved to Tokyo for college (visited Tokyo at the invitation of a senior in high school), switched to a science course in informatics (don’t remember), applied to graduate schools abroad at the same time (a senior in my department applied to both Japan and the US at the same time). I lived for a few years in a country with a large immigrant population where I didn’t understand the premise (I followed it by choice rather than knowing it) twitter.com/nishio/status/


seri_k: “Once I became a working adult, I quit my job and went to a graduate school in Japan to study CS to get a master’s degree in engineering”. This blog was the first time for me to know that even a working adult can take the option of going to graduate school and studying again. note.com/ruiu/n/n3f3146


yosyuaomenww: my relative went around the world as a student twitter.com/nishio/status/


HigeponJa: -Applied for unexplored software (my colleague has experience) -Built an OS from scratch (open source was popular around me) -Worked abroad (my parents and my neighbor’s brother did it) I worked abroad (my parents and my neighbor’s brother did it too) twitter.com/nishio/status/
 twitter.com/nishio/status/


yusk_: I think it was a good choice to become a software engineer and do only that all my life, and that’s how I found out that such a profession (programmer) exists, I learned that such a profession (programmer) existed because I read your book “Hello Microcomputer” in the bookstore on the ground floor of the building I went to every week for lessons when I was in elementary school. Thanks to him and the bookstore. twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • yusk_: I think I would have liked to have changed jobs to a foreign company, but I almost didn’t consider this as an option at first, and the only reason it became an option was because someone who saw my blog, where I was writing what I wanted to write at the time, invited me and set up an interview. The only reason it became an option was that someone who saw my blog, where I was writing what I wanted to write at the time, invited me and set up an interview.

  • yusk_: I think moving to the U.S. afterwards was also effective in increasing my life satisfaction, but I didn’t take this into account when I started working for a foreign company. I didn’t take this into consideration when I started working for a foreign company, and after I changed jobs, I saw that people were coming and going from one country to another quite freely, and I wondered if that was possible. I guess I could have learned about it beforehand, but I didn’t really feel it until I actually saw it.

  • yusk_: unrelated, but actually 9 years ago? I moved to the U.S. 9 years ago. sites.google.com/site/mountainv
: “It’s good to think about living in the U.S. It seems too daring before you do it, but once you do it, it’s no big deal because it becomes a routine. It seems too daring before you do it, but once you do it, it’s not a big deal because it becomes your daily life. I feel that the “I’ll live in the U.S.” is very close to my own.

  • hdump: you know, there are a lot of people in the industry in their 40s. I’m one of them, by the way.

  • yusk_: i feel that way!

papa_s_papa_s: that I stopped job hunting where I was walking to interviews and decided to go to a job that was referred to me. I don’t know if it was the right decision. I don’t know if it was the right decision. The referral came from an acquaintance of my professor. The acquaintance was in and out of the place I was referred to, and they were looking for a student with a certain skill set. I thought that skill sounded interesting and asked the professor to let me do it. twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • papa_s_papa_s: I chose that lab in the first place because the professor was doing research using those skills and the original knowledge. I learned that the professor was doing that skill and knowledge in a lecture. I was interested in the lecture because the professor had taught me some of it in my first year of undergraduate general education.

  • papa_s_papa_s: i chose that department because i did an experiment in a class in high school and was excited and amazed. I chose that university because the science and humanities departments were on the same campus. I had the chance to be exposed to the technology needed for that skill, unrelated to the department, and enjoy it since high school.

  • papa_s_papa_s: anyone who knows what I do now and what I specialize in would not be able to imagine the undergraduate studies and future career I was aiming for my freshman year of high school. I’m sure they wouldn’t have, and I don’t think I could have imagined it then either.

JI1ARI: When I was a senior in college, I was wandering around campus looking for job information when I was approached by a professor who happened to have a recommendation slot open for one of my students. If I hadn’t been there twitter.com/nishio/status/


maq_mish: I did internships during my undergrad and grad school years. I was raised in the countryside, so I realized that I was a “frog in a well” to the point of laughing. I think the reason I found out about it was because an assistant professor I knew recommended it to me. twitter.com/nishio/status/


Hi_neu: I guess I decided on the university department I was going to apply to by paying a surprise visit to that department and visiting their labs. There were no websites or open campuses at the time, and there was not much information to choose from. twitter.com/nishio/status/


RabbitsCat: I did well → attended an art school I knew → hanging ads on trains I noticed the hanging ads because I had the goal of “wanting to go into painting” first I think I noticed the hanging advertisement because I had a purpose to pursue a career in painting. If he did not have a purpose, he would not have seen the ad. I don’t think people would have noticed the choice if they didn’t have a direction, even if it was only a vague one. twitter.com/nishio/status/


niryuu: I’m not much of a researcher, to be honest. I only bought a collection of Kochikame’s computer-related stories at a local convenience store (I recently bought it again, and it’s very well done), and I became a researcher after reading a web diary of an acquaintance that introduced literature on informatics in the humanities, which I bought at a used book store at random.

  • niryuu: I can’t focus on short periods of time, so my progress was slow and blank, or accelerated by industry trends that came and went, but it took me 15 years to become an engineer It took me 15 years to get a part-time job and 15 years to get a part-time job. It seems like an impossible task in the beginning, and even now I’m not particularly competent compared to those around me.

torus: The turning point for me was being adopted by Unexplored Youth, and that was thanks to the SICP reading group. I learned about SICP from K Nakagawa’s mailing list. Around the same time, I moved to Tokyo, which was the biggest choice. I was tired of working part-time at a game company in Kyoto. At that time, I found out about the reading group at the right time. twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • torus: I was able to start my own business because I had the financial freedom to do so thanks to Unexplored Youth. After that, I was invited to join a company in Hawaii, and when the company went out of business, I went back to Tokyo and ended up going to Germany because of various coincidences, not by choice, but as a result I was quite lucky.

ginko105: For some sad reason, I couldn’t use SPSS in grad school and I didn’t know how to use it at all (not even the concept of HTML). I think I would never have touched python or had anything to do with Postgres if it weren’t for this twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • ginko105: You may think that it’s not a choice, but when I had to choose between Excel and R, I chose R. I definitely changed everything about myself. It’s a sad but good lesson that we can only improvise another outcome or future with the cards we have in our hands in the process of our original human purpose.

syarihu: I attended an Android app development seminar right after college, which definitely improved my life after that, and I’m not sure how I found out about it. I was researching to buy an Android device at the time, and I don’t know if I was tracked or not, but I think I saw an ad and applied to attend. twitter.com/nishio/status/


YukiMihashi: In my case, it was “staffing a Scratch onsite event,” which I “learned about on the Scratch forum I got started with Scratch because “my father introduced me to Scratch”, and I think he “learned about Scratch from a friend” (I don’t know much).

syarihu: After graduating as an engineer, I was making my life better again by attending Android Onsen, where I first met Nappi-san. After meeting Mr. Nappi and listening to Ringo and others, I got up the courage to apply for LT on shibuya.apk, which he told me about, and after interacting with more people outside the company, I started to speak and write on an ongoing basis.

makoto_043: After failing 20 jobs during the ice age and whining about it everywhere, a fellow seminar student told me, “You can still get a job here,” and I got the job I have now. I exposed my shabby self and found a clue.

mama_iijyuken: that I went to a technical school when I went to high school and from that school I went to college for the first time. How I found out about it → I got my own computer when I was in the third grade of junior high school and found out about it on the Internet.

  • mama_iijyuken: starting my career at 15 allowed me to start my own business early in my 20s. Starting early makes it easier to balance career and family. I chose my major with a purpose and college was very meaningful. It lowered my hurdle to challenge myself to do something that no one else has done, which has led me to the new challenges I am taking on now.

m_asahara: Choice: (late) doctoral program or doctoral degree How I heard about it: Recommendation from a professor in the lab I was assigned to in my 4th year of undergrad, and seeing some of my seniors (those who had already gone on to higher education and those who had decided to go on to higher education). D. program and to see seniors (those who had already entered the program and those who had decided to enter the program) twitter.com/nishio/status/


suke_masa: choices
 I can think of a few, but the first one would be changing from liberal arts to science in December of my senior year. Probably wouldn’t be in my current position without this. twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • suke_masa: how did you know about this option? The first thing I did was “change to science”. I decided on the electrical department because - the most interesting part of physics was electromagnetism - I had a cousin who was in the electrical department. I decided to go there because it was in the university I had wanted to go to since I was a liberal arts major.

book000: I saw Scrapbox summarized and thought I’d take a look back. twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • book000: I had a lot of choices before I got to where I am today, but ・I joined a social networking site that I happened to find on Twitter ・I created a client for that social networking site (it was almost like a rip-off, but wow!) I was asked to join the predecessor of MyCloud Saba, where I am currently working as a staff member. I started developing plug-ins for MyCloud Saba.

  • I started using Twitter when I was quite young (back when there was no age limit) when my parents created an account for me to “keep track of the books I read” and a few years later, I unlocked my account and connected with the listeners of a podcast I was listening to at the time. I started using Twitter a few years later when I unlocked my account and connected with the audience of a podcast I was listening to at the time.

  • book000: and a certain social network itself, I think it just flowed into my TL, so I don’t remember much. The programmer there was the one who created the client. He had originally created the client, and I started creating it as a successor. I was in middle school or thereabouts, and the operation was garbage, and I had to throw it away, but w

  • book000: As for the Mycla Saba, they asked me directly on that SNS, “Why don’t you come?” I started making plug-ins simply because I felt that the vanilla and existing plug-ins for MyKira were not enough, and also because I felt that programming was interesting when I made a client for a social networking service.

  • book000: At the very least, if I hadn’t found a certain social networking site, I wouldn’t have gotten involved in programming in the way I did, and if I hadn’t been invited to join the MyClub mackerel I don’t think I would have continued programming this far if I hadn’t found a social networking site.

  • book000: It’s hard to make choices that will make your life better, but I think if you put your foot in your mouth a little bit about what you can work on and what you’re interested in, you’ll find something. I don’t know if I’ll be doing programming or something like that as a career in the future, but at least it’s a turning point in my life.

natsumi_k: It is so true what this person wrote that “if you don’t know the options, you can’t choose, so the quality of your decision-making will decrease”. I have two points: 1) I went to SFC (I liked Keio because my parents said “definitely national only, private is acceptable if it’s either Waseda-Keio or Waseda-Keio, if it’s any other private, I’m a high school graduate”, and 2) I was not in a family or school where people who take Tokyo University are around, so (continued) twitter.com/nishio/status /


  • natsumi_k: I had no idea. I was told that I could only take either Waseda-Keio or Waseda-Keio private schools, so I took a national school in the Tokyo metropolitan area that looked fun as a stopgap because I was afraid I would be a high school graduate if I failed Tokyo University (Inaba’s alma mater) since there was no stopgap and no option for a ronin (a high school graduate). When I entered the university and was taking it easy, I found a junior who was preparing to take the CPA exam from his first or second year.

  • natsumi_k: First of all, what is a CPA? I was frustrated when I realized that I had another “challenge I couldn’t take on because I didn’t know my options”. 2) When I was thinking about changing jobs, I found a small ad on Riku Navi Next for a position with Google. I decided not to repeat the “challenge I couldn’t do because I didn’t know the options” this time,

  • natsumi_k: I didn’t think I would be accepted, but since I knew the options, I took it and was accepted. As for coming to the U.S., which may seem like the most significant turning point, it was not a particularly big turning point for me, as I was always ready to take on any opportunity that came my way.

  • natsumi_k: i feel like it was a natural progression. So I think it is very important for students to know the existence of opportunities, the effort to achieve them and the value of that challenge by the time they are in high school or so. I hope that this lecture by the former twi will encourage as many middle and high school students as possible to not set their own limits and to take on big challenges and carve out an enjoyable life for themselves.

  • natsumi_k: I think if my parents had taken the approach of “if it’s not Tokyo University, we won’t send you to college”, the result might have been different. I think that if my parents had taken the approach of “if it’s not Tokyo University, we won’t send you to it”, the result would have been different. I don’t know because I never took it. From the fear of being a high school graduate

  • natsumi_k: I guess it was my defeat in high school when I was too young to challenge myself against that.

kur: this quote tweet is funny twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • kur: I wonder what I am. Going to a technical college, going to Nara Institute of Technology, applying to Unexplored, getting a job at Canon, studying abroad in Denmark, starting my own business. Looking back now, I feel that all of them have great meaning.

  • kur: But I don’t think there were that many things I could say I chose. I went to a technical college because I couldn’t go to a public high school because I played too much in junior high school and messed up my internal exams, and I went to Nara Teki partly because everyone around me was going to school, and partly because that was the only place I could find where I could get a second job.

serima: Like in the movie “Yes Man”, if you take all options with a yes, your life will change little by little. In fact, it’s a matter of consulting with your own capacity (there was a time when I was mentally damaged because I was on board too much) twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • serima: the story behind this, I used to blog about it serima.co/46f7ab44c91943


  • infibility: yes is the password to life, you know!

  • serima: Yes

windhole: i know i missed the boat. My “choice that I think made my life better afterwards” was to buy a magazine (Hatsura) when I was in the 6th grade that was all about amateur radio. That magazine was about microcomputers, and since then, my interest has shifted more towards computers than amateur radio. twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • windhole: “How did you know about that option?” In an elementary school class. At the elementary school I was attending at the time, teachers from all over the country came to give research classes. One day, a teacher who came from Chiba gave a class on a theme like “Communicating Information,” and at the end of the class, he demonstrated communicating by amateur radio.

  • windhole: After class, I went to my teacher and asked a lot of questions, and he told me that I could get an amateur radio license regardless of age, and I I decided to give it a try. I immediately went to a bookstore in town, but they didn’t have any books on amateur radio, but instead I found a magazine “about amateur radio”, so I bought it and went home.

katryo: ←Join Amazon ← Become a software engineer in the US ← Quit the company and enroll in a CS master’s program at a graduate school in the US ← “Engineer the world’s Reading “The Choice to Work on the Front Lines as an Engineer”. I don’t remember how I found out about this book, but I think it came up in an Amazon recommendation amazon.co.jp/gp/r.html?C=1T


lunabirch: I was born into an atheist family and became a Christian, yes. That choice was through people. I tried fancy study abroad and love, but I was still far from happiness and peace. When I was at the bottom of the barrel, I met people who made me wonder how these people could stay strong in such a difficult world to live in, and these people were Christians.

tokibito: I went to a technical college. →I was introduced to it by my parents as a career path. I had several relatives who graduated from a technical college, and I had seen a technical college robot contest, so I could imagine what it would be like right away.

kazuho: too dazzling with all the people making proactive choices twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • nishio: oh? I’m sure there are people out there with cognitive distortions who think they’re not making independent choices, even though they’ve started their own businesses, applied for and been accepted by unexplored projects, found jobs, changed careers, etc., as a matter of self-awareness.

  • kazuho: if you think you have a positive reason, you’re wrong (which is often the case).

  • hasegawayosuke: you didn’t write a career change blog because you changed jobs for passive reasons?

  • kazuho: you wrote it!

  • nishio: I don’t know when the discussion of “proactive/not proactive” changed to “reasons are proactive/not proactive”, but I think the two are different. For example, a person who changes jobs because his company is in the black and he is about to die may have a negative reason, but he is making a proactive choice. Those who are not proactive only complain and do not take action to change.

reali_ze: I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I went to a bookstore to learn something. I saw a HTML5 book on the shelf at the time and thought, “Is it really that popular? I was impressed by the concept of semantic web that was briefly introduced in the book → I looked for a lab that was working on it and entered a graduate school → I went on to a D degree → I became a researcher

sognare_yuki: what made my life better was ‘dumping my DV ex’. It all started when I attended an event and met a certain person who is now my friend. I attended the event and tried to befriend this person out of curiosity. It was really just curiosity. It could be said to be the result of a desire to ‘know the unknown.

park_miyakonojo: There was a time when I had no choice because of my family’s financial situation. However, once I became an adult and was able to make choices, I was able to take many actions such as going to places I wanted to go, meeting people I wanted to meet, etc. As a result, I was able to make my dreams come true. I am glad that I did not have a choice.

seri_k: “Once I became a working adult, I quit my job and went to a graduate school in Japan to study CS to get a master’s degree in engineering”. This blog was the first time for me to know that even a working adult can take the option of going to graduate school and studying again. note.com/ruiu/n/n3f3146


xigemoto: Choice that made my life better 1: When choosing a cram school at junior high school, I entered a cheap local cram school near my home How I found out about it: newspaper inserts Extra Axis of decision making for choice I wanted to reduce the burden on my family budget: cheap (I wanted to reduce the burden on my family budget), an environment with many strangers (to avoid getting used to each other), close to home, and the teachers had a human touch and warmth twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • xigemoto: Choice that made my life better 2: Upward revision of target high school (deviation from 55 to 68) How I knew: My mother’s words “Make as many choices as you can and then choose. Extra Axis of decision: At the open school, there was a cute and English-speaking type of girl, and I felt that the free school culture would be a good fit twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • xigemoto: choices that made my life better 3: I chose to major in Portuguese for my college education How I learned about it: open campus extra Decision points for my choice: I enjoyed the experience class (hugging the person sitting next to me) because I thought I could leverage (increase market value) based on the user population and the projected future GDP growth of the country I was using twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • xigemoto: Choice that made my life better 4: Study abroad in Brazil How did I know: I heard about my seniors’ experiences from my professor in class or from my seniors only vertically (exchange meeting between seniors and juniors). I heard about it in extra Decision point of choice: Influence from Brazilian students on campus. Brazil seemed more fun than Portugal twitter.com/nishio/status/


fish_dishes: I got good grades in high school, so by senior year I had nothing to do. So I went to an art school to learn to draw, and studied design at art school. I wasn’t a great painter, but it was refreshing to learn something new in an area I wasn’t good at, and studying art and beauty also deepened my knowledge of history and economics more than I had before that. twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • fish_dishes: I didn’t get an easy-to-understand academic background, but I was already at the limit of my understanding in high school in terms of classroom learning, and I was able to learn hands-on in college, I think it was a way of learning that was unique to me, although it may have been broad and shallow.

kozo2: - I insisted on going to ISMB in 2008. I met Mr. Kozo at the Cytoscape retreat held in conjunction with the ISMB and he has been a great help to me since then (I may have learned about him through twitter, I forget
) - I went to Python spa. I met Mr. Nishio and he introduced me to his current lab (I found out through his blog. Nishio is an alumnus of his former lab) twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • kozo2: twitter.com/kozo2/status/1
 plus the following. I found out on Twitter that he chose T-Code (non-associative 2-stroke Kanji input method) instead of SKK (Kana-Kanji conversion program). I learned about it from a Tweet that Mr. twitter.com/nishio/status/


tk0miya: I don’t know. I think it’s the fact that I spent 4 years in the lab as an undergraduate and the fact that I was involved in OSS development. The former is that my assistant professor invited me to come visit him in class, so I said yes. The latter was when I participated in a Python study group to help a colleague. twitter.com/nishio/status/


c_z: I’m all about running away from college exams and coming to the US in the 90s. I often call that kind of thing “global,” but it’s not, because I got two places I could call home: the central region of Japan and California. twitter.com/nishio/status/


kensuu: Hiroyuki from 2ch, whom I had never met, calls me and says, “I have an uncle with a tube in his urethra, would you like to come and see him? I was shocked to find out that there are adults like him! I was shocked to hear that there are adults like him!

  • kensuu: I was told, then I thought it was a bad idea and went to work for a recruiter, then I went down the path of doing business on the internet!

nishio: these are also examples of how knowing that option can have a huge impact on your life twitter.com/my_liberty_/st 


  • My_Liberty_ []:](https://twitter.com/My_Liberty_/status/1391073747705073664) My English test score is so low that I can’t even meet the application requirements of several universities. ↓ I found Duolingo English Test, which takes only 1 hour and can be taken at home from Tokushima ↓ My score went up and I just barely met the application requirements and slipped into the application.

tnsm0223: I’ve been thinking back over my life from middle and high school up until today, and I’m reminded that it’s a series of chance encounters that have continued like a string of beads to bring me to where I am today. twitter.com/nishio/studio/studio/studio/studio/studio twitter.com/nishio/status/


loose_agilist: as Qi Lu says in Third Door, “the lucky bus will come back if you miss it, but you can’t get on it if you are not prepared”. I think this is true. The events that changed my life (karate, Python, meeting people) came from the other side when I was looking for them, and I had the courage to jump on them. Sometimes, I am not always successful.

  • loose_agilist: I joined the karate club in college because I failed to audition for the tennis club and had too much free time on my hands. I was lucky enough to join the karate club, but it was my choice to learn dialectics in the karate club and continue learning it for the next 20 years. python was taught to me by a colleague around 2005, and I have been using it ever since. I stroll around the neighborhood and pop into stores that interest me and meet all kinds of people.

  • loose_agilist: I went to a hotel buffet alone at 7 am for a power breakfast, and I met a group of people who were reading together. I met a group of people who were reading and my world expanded. It may be important to visit places where you like and where people you like seem to congregate in order to get unexpected good results.

sbg: - Majored in Information Science (as a child, I encountered computers and games
 like Mitsuru Sugaya’s manga) - Went to university (my parents told me to go there. ) ・Participated in a research group on the Internet (I learned from professors/assistants) ・The environment of the university and the people I met there were super important. I can deeply understand why my parents recommended it


koukiwf: I think it was “applying to Nico Nico Gakkai Beta”. I think the reason I knew about it was because I happened to see the “developer staring at a stuck robot due to a glitch” scene last time. twitter.com/nishio/status/


  • koukiwf: thanks to this, I’m going to be swallowed up in the murky waters of bringing Oculus to Japan after a Taiwanese guy told me about the OculusRiftDK1 I really don’t know what’s going to happen in my life.

bellonieta: the second half is no longer “how did you know about the options”, it’s a collection of private sagas.

  • I had a feeling that was the case, but I think I’ll just collect them for now and play them later when I’m ready to organize them.

MakotoShimazu: going to Tokyo University was a great way to broaden my circle of friends and information. (This also seems to have increased my options.) However, when I wrote “researcher” as my career choice at the beginning of high school, my teacher told me that if I wanted to be a researcher, I should go to the University of Tokyo.

iriyak: learned about the options of interest from books. Entered the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. ← Joined Macintosh Users Group through someone he met. ←Modified and used memory as storage area. ←I learned about terminal programs for PC8001 from PC/Telecom Introduction (Radio Technology Co., Ltd.). ←Joined local BBS with ANK. ←I bought a modem. ←I got a PC8001MK2.

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