I left Vietnam when I was 16 years old to embark on my journey overseas in the United States and Australia.

I used to spend an entire school year switching between three different majors, which cost my parents thousands of dollars.

At one point, I even left a well-paying part-time job to invest $3000 AUD of my savings in an online consulting course to start my own business, but it ended up as a failure.

Even though I built many projects for my portfolio, my resume got rejected more than 50 times, and I interviewed at more than 20 companies in my job-hunting journey,

While I faced many failures and moments of embarrassment, I also gathered a number of achievements along the way:

⭐I became a Senior Software Engineer and a Frontend lead at PageUp within 4 years.

⭐ I received an Industry Placement Scholarship from the National Australia Bank worth $18,000 for a six-month internship, and I was the first intern to earn the AWS Associate certification.

⭐ I completed my Bachelor of Information Technology with a major in Software Development at Monash University, earning an International Merit Scholarship of $6000 per year for maintaining a high GPA until graduation.

⭐I assisted many fellow students in reaching their career aspirations.

⭐I completed the Professional Year in IT program, scoring 85 on the PTE and achieving NAATI CCL certification.

⭐I was sponsored by my company for a Visa 407 Training.

⭐I was invited to apply for a state-nominated visa 190, which led to me now becoming an Australian citizen.

So you can see that despite facing initial challenges and setbacks, I've managed to turn those experiences into valuable lessons that led to significant achievements. My journey demonstrates that success isn't about avoiding failures, but rather about learning from them and persisting toward your goals. Here's what this taught me:

⭐Every "failure" became a stepping stone for future success, from switching majors to eventually finding my true passion in IT

⭐ Investment in yourself, even when it doesn't work out perfectly (like that consulting course), teaches you important lessons about decision-making and resource management

⭐Those coding projects weren't failures - they were practice grounds that ultimately contributed to my becoming a Senior Software Engineer

My story shows that it's not about having a perfect journey, but about maintaining persistence and resilience through the challenges. Each setback was preparing me for bigger opportunities, leading to achievements like earning scholarships, gaining professional certifications, and ultimately securing citizenship in Australia.