Those who know me are very familiar to the fact that I am a very private person. Those who know of me, but didn’t have the opportunity to know more, or simply don’t know me at all — I am indeed a very private person. I don’t really share my life on social media and as a result, I have been referred to as a “mystery man” several times.
There are a few reasons I believe why people have this perception of me. Technology heavily influences our social interactions by enabling us to communicate and share just about anything and everything on social media instantly. I simply don’t find it necessary or a priority to share things unless I find it personally amusing or cool to share. In other words, I am extremely picky with what I share. I would rather share my personal life in-person, but only when I find it relevant or adds value to the conversation or discussion.
In my opinion, this can make our relationships more personable and invites empathy. In non-trivial discussions, I may not add my two cents unless I, at the very least, know what is being discussed. I recognize that it may seem to appear that I am apathetic about the discussion, but if it is an unfamiliar topic to me, I won’t have much to contribute other than raising questions. This is largely because I have a tendency to gather data before convincing myself to resolve to a decision or a conclusion. What I mean by gathering data is that I process my thoughts with the results of my research of different perspectives and opinions associated to the topics. This process may be slow and create a perception that I seem detached.
Sometimes I will simply admit that I don’t know and will get back to them about it and then I will objectively collect my thoughts before giving my honest two-cents. I personally don’t like to be misinformed and don’t wish to misinform others with the possibility of bad or hasty judgement. Of course, this has its benefits and also introduces some hurdles for me to overcome. Addressing that perception of detachment is one of the hurdles I am trying to overcome with this blog, by investing into self-improvement and sharing insights to my thought processes, opinions, and experiences.
My Focus
- Development: Sharing my personal and professional challenges and growth — things I learned (and things I wish to learn) through successes, failures, experiences, insights, and reflections.
- Career: Working is a big part of our lives. How do we navigate and build our careers to find fulfillment?
- Expression: Intimate narrative of my thought processes, opinions, and rationale behind my decisions.
These overarching themes will be the main focus of my blogs. Now I definitely recognize that I am not the smartest person nor the most experienced, but I have met several young professionals and new graduates that share great ideas, experiences, and perspectives, but usually exclusively within their network. I want to hopefully fill a part of that void and create a community for people to share their experiences.
I really enjoy blogs because I learned several things that made me think, “wow I have never thought of it that way before”, and would like to also contribute to that feeling to others. I also feel like blogging is the best medium (hehe) for me because I can organize my thoughts before expressing them. Sometimes my mouth just can’t keep up with how fast I process my thoughts, resulting to stumbling on my own words. This is apparent when I have to think about what level of detail or context is required for the other person(s) to understand exactly what I’m talking about.
A goal with my blog is to challenge and develop myself by incrementally stepping outside of my comfort zone and share my journey along the way. I had gained a lot of knowledge from several accomplishments and insightful experiences that have both inspired and boosted my confidence. Some of these accomplishments and experiences were shared within my network, but I also wanted to share it with you all!
A little about me
Sign me up!
My name is Jackie Luc (pronounced “luke”, but honestly I like “luck” a little better because I was born on St. Patricks Day) and I’m studying Computer Science with a concentration in Software Engineering at the University of Calgary. I am currently interning and contributing my talent as a software developer at WestJet, before returning to school to complete my remaining semester before graduation.
My main responsibilities at WestJet are to enhance and sustain the front-end and back-end development of westjet.com and WestJet Vacations. I will definitely highlight my work experiences in the near future, so stay tuned! I am also volunteering my talent as a web developer at RED (Reforming Education on Drugs), where I co-created and maintain the website rededucate.com. There might also be a blog in the near future to gain some rationale about the decisions we agreed about the development processes.
When I am not working or volunteering, I like to hangout with friends to socialize or play board games. When I am home, I usually like to work on side projects, read software development blogs, watch K-dramas, anime, or random YouTube videos — from cat videos to videos of software development conferences. I used to play a lot of video games, but sometimes it is difficult to align everyone’s schedule to play together, which is usually when I enjoy it the most.
Things you probably didn’t know about me
- I’m a huge sneakerhead. I probably own over 70 pairs of sneakers. My favourite sneaker model of all time is the Air Jordan 1. Fun fact, I was lucky enough to purchase a pair of “Adidas Yeezy 350 Boost — Oxford Tans” at the retail value of $350 CAD. You might think, “$350 for a pair of sneakers? They better make you fly!” It sure is expensive, but considering that the sneaker now has a resell value of $2,070 CAD (highest offer for my size on StockX, an eBay of exclusive sneakers), it doesn’t seem too crazy. What is crazy is the price people are willing to pay. However, I’m in no position to judge what other people spend their money on.
- People call me the “Pun Master”. I don’t know when this started, but I have probably lost some respect and friendships by consistently dropping puns on my friends. Fun fact, the longest pun-chain (consecutive sentences with puns) within a legitimate conversation that I had was 7 (is there a Guinness World Record for that?). Now I’m not a circus animal that will pun on demand (shall I start a TV show?), but I will definitely sneak puns into conversations here-and-there. Can you pick up on the subtly of my puns?
- Hip-hop and EDM are my go-to music genres. The reason why I say they are my go-to music genres is because I can enjoy a variety of music genres as a result of having a very adventurous music history. My music timeline went something like this: Pop → Rock → RNB → Trance / K-Pop → Dubstep → Hip-hop / RNB → EDM / Trap (EDM) / House → Hip-hop / Trap (Hip-hop) → Hip-hop / EDM. Yes, I know what you guys are all thinking, K-Pop, Dubstep, and Trance? C’mon, I know some of you guys who went through those phases as well 😛. Fun fact, I had over 2200 RNB songs out of 3600 songs in my iPod when I was in the RNB phase.
- I watch Korean Drama & Variety shows. There’s just something about K-dramas and K-variety shows that captivated me. At the time when I first started watching them, I thought that the quality of production, acting, and writing was far superior to everything else at the time. Not to mention, their culture and their humour was far more interesting to me.
- I played MapleStory for over 7 years and League of Legends for over 3 years. I played both games starting from their respective beta releases. I learned a lot of life lessons from interacting with the once-amazing community from MapleStory and I still keep in contact with a few online friends. Fun fact, I learned how to type accurately and quickly from playing MapleStory and became the fastest typist throughout my elementary.