This environment sounds like a case of no accountability and negligence. If a intern can make this type of decision without review and accountability, what other decisions are being made under the same environment of no review and accountability within the company?
I would share the following principles to apply to your career (from my martial arts studies):
Be Honest.
Be Humble.
Respect self and others.
Practice diligently.
Seek perfection of character.
And would also share the following quote from Hiroshi Saito (CEO of Chateraise) which I came across later in life and thought it helps to change your perspective:
Everything outside of me has something to teach me.
Discovered it by accident. I'm not into the religion but I discovered meditation by listening to the talks recorded by an American Buddhist monk. You'll need to distill it but the knowledge is in there and the workings and mechanics of the mind is described in such detail that I have never heard about it anywhere. https://www.dhammatalks.org/mp3_collections_index.html
45 here. Two in college, two teenagers and my wife is back in school. I've managed software teams in the past and have done my share of coding but today, I work from home and code for a living which I truly enjoy but would definitely entertain the opportunity to have my hands in more things. I think the biggest things I have discovered in my 40s is a refocus on my physical and emotional health especially by discovering meditation - at this point I feel that meditation has had the biggest impact so far. I also try not to overreact to things in my life and to try to enjoy the moments more and try to be supportive of my wife and kids as much as I can. As far as professional development, try to do side projects that scratch an itch and allow you to develop skills you wouldn't normally be able to develop at a day job. Try to stay up-to-date in industry and attend conferences when you can, they are great for the exposure to what's going on in industry but its also nice to meet other professionals, network and get out of the office.
When I first started working as a manager for a group of folks, my own manager insisted that if one day someone in my group didn't show up for work and there wasn't a phone call or email or a note, he said to always try to get in touch with the individual to see if everything was ok. My manager was so insistent on following this practice so I asked him why he felt so strongly about this. He said he had an experience in which he had one of his folks not show up for work - no phone call, no email, no note so he tried to reach the individual by phone. After no response given multiple attempts to reach him, by late afternoon, my boss decided to drive out to the individual's house. When he got to his house, he found the gentleman passed out in front of his house. Thankfully, this story ended up with a happy ending.
You are not just a statistic, you are much more. Your an inspiration to your family and to all of us just like all of those that have responded to you with offers to help. Let us all know how we can help.
So sorry to hear about the current situation, found myself filled with a lot of emotion as I read through it. Reminds me of a talk I had with a good friend of mine where we basically acknowledged that we're not afraid to die but that we're more afraid of the dying process.
Came across an insightful video and presentation given at the Konsoll 2013 conference on "marketing indie games on a $0 budget" that might be of interest to folks. It was given within the context of indie game development but its really addressing a common problem.
Don't be afraid to make a decision on choosing a specific path in life. The sooner you make a decision, the sooner you start learning and finding out things about the path. If you find yourself having a life where you are not happy for a really long period of time, re-assess things and make another decision. You have the rest of your life to figure out what you want to do, many people who are much older than you are still trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up and you know - that is totally ok. Grow your network of friends and mentors and never be afraid to ask for help - you are doing good so far :) Get involved in things that you wouldn't normally do, these opportunities lead to other opportunities and also help you grow your network - many organizations with great causes out there. Always have something that you care about and is personal to you on the side, no matter what happens in life, you always have that one thing that matters to you and no one can take away. Hope you have a fun and great 16th bday!
The following youtube video is a decent intro on binaural beats - make sure you listen with headphones. Also, everything after the 5:55 mark starts becoming an infomercial so you can stop there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCfUbFjin00
The key is to relax your eyes, let them get lazy like you stayed up all night and cross them just a bit. Focus on just one spot and it should come into focus - eventually :)
That was a pretty cool crash course on Lua Tyler! Thanks for putting that together and sharing it. After having had worked with numerous languages over the years such as Fortran, Pascal, Ada, C, Java, C++, C#, Python and Objective-C, I must say that working with Lua is my favorite. I'm thankful to a buddy of mine for introducing it to me. My own personal experience has shown me that working with Lua really allows you to focus on solving the problem versus getting wrapped around the axle at the programming language level. Thanks again