That isn’t something you’d like to hear when you arrive at your destination. Whether it’s work, school or a dinner with the family, late is not on-time.
But what if you felt late when finding a career or a passion? Figuring out what you to do with your life is stressful, overwhelming, and quite exhausting. The talk you have with your peers and family members about what you’ve been up to, and what you want to do with your life seem repetitive for anyone born after 1985. It’s the small talk that can bring most of us down.
Where my late feeling started wasn’t when I was 30, I’m actually 27 as of writing this, and it was not when I graduated high school at 17. It started at 25, at College of Marin (COM), in English 150.
Before I delve into my ‘late feeling’, it started in 2008 during my Junior year.
I was in my counselor’s office to speak about college and career options. My parents were in the middle of a divorce (my step-mom and father). I knew I wouldn’t have a backing to go to a 4-year university, plus I was a B- student in Marin county’s middle class. Matt Moore, my counselor, recommended studying at College of Marin and transfer after 2 years. That sounded decent and I did not have to spend much, yada yada yada..
I picked the only subjects I enjoyed learning about: History, Politics and Photography. I chose to major in Political Science, studied ancient and contemporary history, philosophy, logic. I really did enjoy my professors very much, though there was one issue: What would I do with this degree when I transferred?
Lawyer, Public Servant, Teacher, etc… sounded like blah…
It’s 2013.
I went on hiatus from school to work, and work I had done. I gigged freelance photography and video, bagged coffee at Equator, delivered for a medical dispensary, and worked as a bike mechanic. But nothing stuck for long. I was single for almost 2 years at the time and traveled internationally by myself. Then one day a friend, Devon, showed his mini-computer that plugs into any TV, similar to a Chromecast. He could find any show or movie, play Xbox/PS games and even make it work like a regular computer (It was a predecessor to Raspberry Pi, I’m guessing). We talked about it and he said I can make my own, I just need to learn a language called Python. I didn’t put much effort at the time, and I put it on the back burner. I was having fun while living and working, and having an open schedule was godsend, yet… I felt something change in my priorities.
It’s 2016.
I just move into an awesome locale in San Rafael and roommate with my younger brother. I started dating my current girlfriend, we had a blast making money and treating ourselves to anything life threw our way.
In comes November.
My grandparents are trying to persuade me to figure out my career path and all I want is for them to be happy and know I will do it. That’s the pressure that started the ‘late feeling’.
I enroll back into COM.
I’m sitting in my English 150 night class, reading one of Sherman Alexie’s books, when I start realizing. I didn’t want to go to school for Political Science, I wanted to pursue a technical trade in technology. My best friend Ryan, a Software Engineer in Seattle with no college degree, was able to purchase a house at 24 years old.
Then it hit me…That was it!
I was wanted to learn to code and get an engineering position at some big tech giant like Google or Apple.
While in class that same night, I googled: ‘How to become a software engineer’. The laundry list of outlets and resources were numerous. Online courses telling you:
’12 weeks is all you need to get a $100,000 job!’
‘Code is the new literacy’
‘Build apps to change the world’
And all of these were good hooks to get me interested. After class before I left, I walked up to the teacher and said,
“Hey, thank you for the knowledge you’ve shared with me. I am sorry to say, I won’t be coming back to your class. I have decided that I want to do something else with my life”.
As any smart, mature person would, she had a skeptical look on her face and gave a backhanded goodbye.
That night, I had a lengthy conversation with Ryan about getting into programming, and he had nothing but good advice and motivating words. He did warn me: “It’s like learning to read and write in another language, and you’ll be fixing small errors all the time”. I took what he said and went to sleep, motivated to get started first thing in the morning. At this point, I have never even drank a half cup of coffee in my life (even working at a coffee roaster, I never drank it).
The next morning, I made my first cup of coffee, and it was too milky sweet…rookie move. But I didn’t know any better. I started with Codecademy, where I assume most people stumble upon first. It was a decent platform for learning simple syntax, but I needed something more structured to a project based curriculum.
That’s when I stumbled upon Udemy and the ‘Web Developer Bootcamp’ (WDB) course by Colt Steele. Look it up and buy the course. It’s worth it and it’s a no brainer during the $10–12 on sale (wait for holiday’s as they go on sale all the time).
To be continued…
On the next post, I will talk about how I started working through the WDB, and telling my family and friends, especially my grandparents, about my career and see if they (grandparents) decided to financially support my coding education!
