My name is Daniel. I remember being diagnosed with Schizophrenia when I was just starting my college education. This happened when I was 19 years old.
High school hadn’t prepared me for the real world. I took the small savings I had and visited the United States with hopes of better job opportunities. As Steve Jobs once said “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.” Sometimes when you are young you have this great confidence in yourself. You almost feel as if you’re invincible.
Weeks later my own body would let me know, that this was not the case.
My goal was to work in construction or technology. Finding a job was no easy task, I had to think outside the box. I traveled as much as I could during the day. Talked with family members about open positions. Read blogs about becoming independent. That was my life during the first weeks in San Francisco.
While taking online classes on Coursera I learned about Probability and Statistics, Startups, and Graphic Design. I eventually stumbled upon a company called Year Up.
I filled out my application and waited. I didn’t think too much about the job since I knew I wouldn’t get accepted. There was a lot of competition and my resources were limited.
One of my aunt’s iPhones had stopped working so I decided repairing it would be a good idea. On my way to City College of San Francisco, there was this cellphone repair shop. Actually, there were two cellphone repair shops. One of them was located in Mission St. and the other one was near my house. The solution seemed simple to me, watch a couple of YouTube videos and fix the phone myself.
Exhilarated, I bought an iPhone screwdriver In order to take the screws out. The problem with the iPhone was that the screen was cracked. I managed to take one screw out however I ended up wearing out the other screw. After a couple of minutes of thinking about the problem, I decided to go outside for a bit. I relaxed and decided to try out the cellphone repair shop near my house. The name of the repair shop was Cyber Iman.
The cellphone repair shop was run by a Hispanic couple. Since I had a small amount of savings, my Aunt offered to pay for the cellphone repair. I entered the cellphone repair shop and a woman answered. She asked me if I needed any help. I told her I needed an iPhone 4 screwdriver. Since their job was to repair cellphones, it wasn’t in their best interests to sell me the screwdriver.
Long story short, I ended up getting the screwdriver and an interview to work for them. My aunt’s iPhone wasn’t fixed yet but I had a positive outlook for my future in the tech industry.
“This is the Genesis and I don’t even see a worthy arch-nemesis”