Oliver Solano
A risk taker and an innovator. The two words I came up with that best describes the type of person I am hoping to be in the future. Now don’t get the wrong idea, when I say risk taker, I’m not talking about going bungee jumping or base jumping (although sky diving is on my list), I mean being able to take risks when they count and when I talk about being an innovator, I mean being able to find creative and efficient solutions to problems we face everyday. Adversely, in the past and probably even now, I have been mainly known as the quiet, shy, smart and nice guy that usually keeps to himself. I was the type of person who just liked staying within my comfort zone and didn’t experience or try new things. As time had gone by and I began to experience more and more things throughout my life, I came to learn that the things that I have come to be passionate about and the person I am looking to be, can’t be achieved without going outside of this zone, without taking some risk. Risks need to be taken, because sometimes the best stuff in life require us to climb that mountain.
A little background on my personal achievements, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering, have interned as an Electrical Engineer in Port Authority and am currently working as an Analyst at a Financial Software Company in Summit, NJ. I’ve created websites, an iPhone application, have done some very innovative work in Electronics, and out of the ordinary passed the NJ Real Estate Examination. On the side, I work on various programming projects, write as often as I can on Yelp about some of the restaurants I go to and am a big fan of TED, Inc, MIT Technology Review, Mashable and Times to name a few. Some hobbies of mine involve eating, cooking, running, reading and learning about different cultures and places through the Travel Channel. Given all this, it seems that I am not far away from becoming the type of person I want to be, but really there is so much more work to be done and there is so many things out there that I would like to experience.
Getting there is a continual journey, where I’ll be facing many different obstacles and challenges. It is these type of experiences that I’ll be blogging about, where hopefully I can communicate to you all what I succeeded or failed to do. Being a shy and quiet person, it is not exactly easy for me to go to networking events, and being someone who likes to stay in his comfort zone, one of the most difficult things for me, is to go up on a stage and speak to a group of people... but dammit, I’m doing it anyway! I’m doing it not because I have to, I really don’t have to do any of these things, I can really just live fine without doing any this, but that is not the type of life I want to live. I refuse to live life just being fine! So, luckily I met a group of individuals who share the same motivations I have, hence JOCC was created. We all want to improve ourselves personally and professionally, because it really is the only path which makes sense to us. I hope that by blogging, my experiences and the lessons I’ve learned will help you achieve your goals in life. It is my belief that anyone can achieve what they want to in life and when we start doing the things we love to do, that is when we truly start living a fulfilling and happy life.
