How did this journey start?
If someone asked me where my story really begins I’d say it began the day a friend of mine received a phone call from a Marine Corps recruiter. Not me, but a very dear friend who I consider to be a brother from another mother. He, who I will refer to as Jimbo, received the call during our Junior year in Highschool and had absolutely no intention of enlisting. But, he thought it would’ve been funny to tell the recruiter that I was interested in enlisting as a prank and told the recruiter to give me a call. Well… One phone call, the promise of being able to travel the world, a few signatures and 2 years later I was off to become a United States Marine.
My journey began in the deserts of Twenty-nine Palms where I received training and then I was immediately off to the beautiful and tropical island Okinawa, Japan. After which I was sent to the wonderful state of California, specifically San Diego for 2 years which would have been the end of my first contract with the Marine Corps, but I decided there was more that I wanted to do so I re-enlisted for an additional 4 years. I was off to Virginia to receive some training and then I was off to Tanzania, then Iraq and finally Portugal as my last official duty station before finishing my time in the United States Marine Corps. This is where my journey as a Marine taking place over the course of a long, tiring, exciting and memorable 9 and a half years of my life ended. Every year during my time in the Marine Corps I would come back home to see family and celebrate the birthday of a very dear friend of mine. Who you might ask was this friend. It was none other than Jimbo, who had gotten me into the Marine Corps as a result of a prank.
After returning home I decided to attend Pace University to pursue a degree in Computer Science because I always had an interest in going into tech industry as a whole. During my year in college Jimbo decided to attend Flatiron School to pursue a career in Software Engineering. I would occasionally go visit him as he live close-by and I remember how passionate he was about the training he was receiving through Flatiron. He always spoke very highly about it and seemed to be enjoying every minute of it even if it was tiring, exhausting and overwhelming at times. This struck a chord in me because as many other veterans will tell you, we tend to miss our time in the military after transitioning out and the experience he was having reminded me of my time in the Marine Corps.
I missed it and my time in college was not helping at all. I strongly dislike wasting my time and college was beginning to feel more and more like a waste of my time. I loved the primary courses which involved learning Java, the concepts involved with programming and the machines we used, however every other course I took only detracted from what I wanted to learn. Being forced to take classes that were in no way related to the field I was pursuing made me frustrated beyond belief and this was when I began thinking of alternatives to attending college.
This is when Flatiron popped into my head and I immediately began researching into it. I decided that the Data Science program appealed to me the most initially because of the time line. It was the program I could start as quickly as possible and I wanted in. I fully committed to attending Flatiron in the middle of December 2021, which also happened to be right at the end of my semester. To be able to attend Flatiron in January 2022 I grinded to complete everything that was required to secure my spot while finishing my finals and final projects for college. I am proud to say I was able to finish everything and secured my position. This is where my time as a student at Pace University ends and my journey as an aspiring Data Scientist begins.
Just because life is a journey that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy the destinations in-between
