changeCareer()
I’m attending Fullstack Academy because my research showed that, among the coding schools popping up like mushrooms all over the city, it was the best; or at least the best suited for me.
Also, of course, because they let me in.
But the reason I’m becoming a computer programmer almost ten years after I graduated from college with a degree in English Literature and Medieval Studies is a little more complicated. Like most English majors — hell, most millennials — I’ve held a number of jobs since graduating: assistant program director for an academic summer camp, quality assurance at a software company, freelance writer, editorial assistant at publishing houses both huge and and less-huge, and server at Virgil’s BBQ in Times Square, to name a few. The experiences I had at each, both positive and negative, slowly revealed a more complete picture of what I desired out of my career, and subsequently, my life.
Namely: I like creating things. I like being part of a team working towards a defined goal. I like knowing, objectively, whether what I’ve created works or doesn’t work. I like when I can take something that works and make it work better. I like being able to take intrinsically worthless components—words, for example—and order them in such away that a glorious something is created from a base nothing. It’s like magic, and it’s not so different than writing stories. Coding allows me to happily lose myself in creative problem solving for hours on end and have a tangible (so to speak) result at the end of the process.
What more could anyone want?
