New Beginnings with Coding
It was a tough decision to make when I began my path with Flatiron School. The beginning 2017 was full of career setbacks and obstacles. Things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped and my career was starting to look more like a repetitive task-oriented job. Amongst other issues, my health began to decline. It was time for a career change.
During tough moments, I turn back to coding and art. These two areas were and still are my constant companions during stressful times. From what I can remember, my first time coding was in my 8th grade computer science class. Mr. Stebbins had the class learn how to code on those 1980s Apple computers. You know, the ones with the big ol’ fat floppy discs and black screens with white pixel texts? Our main project for the semester was to take an image we liked, trace it on a provided grid, make simple calculations, and input those calculations into the computer to generate our image in 8-bit code. My completed project was the image of the Bob-omb from Super Mario Brothers. :]

I’m happy to have learned a great tool about computers during my childhood. I wished I had knew that a career could be built from that experience. I furthered my curiosity of coding with countless hours of designing my MySpace page and communicating in forums/message boards. From these places I learned about HTML and CSS. Little did I know that I was playing with user interfaces and the basics of Front-End Development.
The career change began with refreshing myself with the basics of coding. I pushed myself lesson after lesson from Skillcrush, Codecademy, Udacity, Khan Academy, and a few others.
About 8 months later of relearning how to code, I signed up for Flatiron School’s Online Full Stack Web Development program. I’m so glad I was awarded the Women Take Tech Scholarship upon enrollment. I woke up to the bling of my phone to such wonderful news. I’ve been working on the bootcamp courses early in the beginning but upon enrollment I began the Full Stack course starting off with the Introduction to Ruby courses. So far, I really enjoy the curriculum, even though I’m struggling to understand how to execute the labs (might just be a lot more learning to be done :] ). The support from instructors, classmates, and study groups have been very helpful and supportive. Communication with Flatiron has been wonderful. They’re timely and respectful. You get a transcript of your questions and responses from fellow supporters for your records if you ever need to return to them. I like being able to get real time help because watching videos and practicing coding on your own can only take you so far.
Here’s to the beginning of my career change. Future postings would be my journey throughout the courses. I hope I can figure it all out in time to start my new career.
Originally published at christineiscoding.com on August 22, 2017.
