My name is Emrecan Şuşter. I took my first breath on November 22, 1997, at 11:15 AM, at Doğan Hospital located in the Cennet neighborhood of Küçükçekmece district in Istanbul.
If you're curious about what kind of place it is, you can get off at the metrobus stop called "Cennet Mahallesi" and examine the surroundings. Truth be told, I've never been there, but I catch glimpses of it occasionally while going to the last stop on the metrobus—that crime against humanity—(pressed against the window). It doesn't look like a bad place. I mean, just the right place to be born.
I've never liked describing myself. Most people don't really intend to truly describe themselves, so they give a superficial account and move on. They write about their skills, job, and school. There are two reasons for this. First, it's genuinely a laborious task, and second, we don't really think the other party wants to get to know us. For instance, imagine... You're hiring an employee, and in the about section of his personal website, it says "My father used to beat me with a hose when I was little." You wouldn't want to read that, and at the same time, the person wouldn't want to tell it either. For example, he writes there, "I'm a Backend developer. My life is writing C#. I sleep at Microsoft's doorstep." You'd think, "Is your entire existence about writing software that receives and sends those fancy technical messages called JSON?" But he gives you that illusion in the end.
A person defining themselves through their profession is exactly like this. All their self-descriptions become function-oriented. Modern humanity comes down to saying, "I perform this function, look, this is who I am." A C# developer... Wow... For instance, what do you listen to music-wise? Hmm... Remixes of Steve Ballmer's "Developers" video... Now that's a real C# developer!
When you describe the job through programming, it looks a bit pathetic. The person we call a programmer is ultimately someone to be looked down upon. A programmer is someone who has no joy or fun, who examines cryptic logic until evening. But honestly, working is like that anyway. For example, what we call a "Writer" does something similar. The cryptic logic here is human pleasures and tastes. Just as a person doesn't listen to Steve Ballmer because they're a programmer, similarly a writer doesn't make a music preference based on their writing. For instance, I wrote the most emotionally charged scenes in my own writings accompanied by quite bombastic Metal songs. Yes, I did writing too!
Okay, so this is something worth mentioning. I once had a special interest in writing, and I assure you that I finished a science fiction novel not to become popular but for the pure pleasure it gave me. It consisted of approximately 80 thousand words. If it had been accepted, it would have been published through the Ministry of Culture's "Literature Works Support Project," but it was rejected, probably because it contained all kinds of topics that our great state wouldn't like. I beg your pardon, but I'm going to rebel: Damn, they accepted everyone else's!
Anyway, let's get back to this matter of being able to describe oneself. Actually, everyone is more or less aware of this, especially lately people try to describe themselves in a more colorful way. But this time we're heading towards a world where everything consists of colorful personalities. Being colorful and different is becoming ordinary.
There's actually a way to distinguish this. Can a person explain their difference in depth? It's easy to say "I'm different," it's also easy to say "I'm creative." A step more difficult version of this, but still of the same nature, is using the patterns used by people known to be different and creative. This is more dangerous because it convinces you to believe in something false.
Depth is important here, how much a person can describe themselves with their own sentences is what matters. A good introduction is written this way.
Now let's pause for a second. Was the purpose of this writing to examine what people write about themselves? Was it to discuss how to write a good about page? No! It was to describe myself.
My way of thinking is a bit strange. For instance, when I talk about a job, my mind suddenly sees it as a very multi-layered task. I really complicate very simple things. Am I going to write a piece describing myself? Normally other people scribble something and move on. For me, that job isn't like that. "How can I describe myself? What's needed to describe myself? How have other people described themselves?" This isn't perfectionism. The output can be flawed, I don't mind that. But I feel like I need to establish a strategy from the very beginning in its simplest form.
Anyway, what were we saying? Where was I born, what had I done... Yes... Let's go through my educational life. I completed my kindergarten education at Kütahya Atakent Elementary School in the field of "Not getting tripped up and being able to establish social communication." Then I worked for eight years at Antalya Nadire Konuk and Ali Oğuz Elementary School on "Learning to defend myself" and specialized in this field at Antalya High School. Then I received Psychology education at Üsküdar University.
Maybe I can do a master's degree in the future, after all, we all have the military service burden hanging over our heads. (You know, you do cleaning and stuff, do push-ups, and if you do the slightest thing wrong, you get beaten up)
Okay. What am I interested in? Well, after devouring the psychology corpus, I concluded that I was starting to get bored with psychology. I was starting to feel like being a smart-ass in classes saying "Professor, we know this," my grades had dropped because I was tired of seeing the same things over and over again. (Normally it would be the opposite, right?) Just to have some variety, so I wouldn't always be interested in the same things, I started dabbling in programming. The important thing is to work on different subjects, to keep the mind alive. The concept called neuroplasticity affected me quite a bit.
Then when I got involved with programming morning and evening, they said you might as well look for a job, maybe you'll find one. I said fine, I said okay, and in the end it became our profession. Now I'm going to take up guitar as a hobby. I hope it doesn't end with me becoming a guitarist in a Rock band.
I'm thinking of continuing with programming in the future. People prefer that I take a path that combines psychology and programming. But to tell you the truth, both are beautiful in their own right, and I don't think a person has to turn everything they know into money. There are many subjects that need to be active outside of work life, and psychology helps quite a bit there already.
Honestly, I don't like the feeling of learning something purely for profession - career. I love the feeling of learning something. My only problem is that I can't deepen this learning.
Other than that, I like listening to quirky little music, I don't use social media, and I like wandering aimlessly on the streets. I'm not a cat dad, am I even a cat that I would father cats? Turkish people who onwed liras to their pets to just buy them love to mention themselves as "cat dad/cat father or cardinal of birds". Let the little animals roam the streets.