Meeting the Future Head On
My journey to begin coding was like many others…which means anything but traditional. Before I can explain why I started to code, let me give you a little background.
I graduated from Lehigh University in 2012 with a Bio-Engineering degree. I loved learning about prosthetics, new synthetic cell lines that could replicate human skin for burn victims, and how the medical field uses current technology to learn and aide others. However, before beginning my professional career in an interesting field, I wanted to help others. Little did I know that joining the Peace Corps would help me more than I ever expected.
My time as a high school math teacher in Mozambique was incredible, filled with the highs and lows of all Peace Corps Volunteers. I was surrounded by a wonderful community of people that were so giving, sharing, and happy. Here, so far from home I found what a community really could be. I’ll be honest, assimilating back to American culture after my service ended was much harder than adjusting to life in a country so foreign to everything I had known in the US.
As my service was nearing an end, my brother, who was doing Teach for America at the time, mentioned that his school district needed a math teacher mid-school year. My return to the states was perfect timing and I taught for two years in Colorado. Teaching both abroad on domestically humbled me, but I hadn’t found ‘my people’ yet. I was missing that community feel that was so prevalent in my village back in Africa, so I went back to school to focus on bettering communities themselves.
I received my Masters degree in Environmental Public Health, looking to connect my passion for the environment with my desire to be part of my community. Fair warning, working in Public Health most likely means working for the government, and if you know anything about working for the government, it is anything but efficient. Efficiency and keeping busy is my motto, so I began working for a pet moving company. Don’t worry, I didn’t know that was a job before working there either. We partnered with Fortune 500 companies that would ask us to move employees’ pets when they were relocated for work abroad or domestically. While many parts were a blast — who wouldn’t want to see photos of pets all day?, the hours were less than ideal. Imagine working with VIP clients that live in every timezone and you’ll begin to understand.
When Covid-19 arrived in 2020, the airline industry, which our business relied upon, was turned upside-down. Myself along with the majority of the office was furloughed. With this newfound free time I started to dabble in coding to keep busy. I had always been interested and I love learning new things, so it was a natural progression. Dabbling turned into watching a youtube video…or ten. I started asking questions on Reddit, taking free courses online, which led to more questions (what the heck is GitHub and how does it work!?). Two months later I was offered my full-time job back moving pets. Instead of being elated at the prospect of having my job back, my heart sunk and my first thought was, I don’t want to go back, I want to code.
Learning on your own can be hard. I began to amass mentors, but I also found that the community at large was absolutely fantastic. Instead of coders making fun of my questions or judging me for my lack of knowledge, I found an army of people happy and willing to help. Not only were they knowledgeable and excited to share what they knew, but they were funny! The more I learned, the more I realized this felt right. I wanted to learn, and I wanted to be surrounded by others making the same journey I did.
So here I am saying ‘Hello, world’ and I hope you enjoy my journey.
