My Journey to Hackbright Academy

“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” — Salvador Dali

This time last year, I was a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, only three weeks away from the whirlwind of final exams. The previous week, my team and I executed the TEDxUIUC conference with resounding success. The following week, I would go on to finish my first full marathon with a 5k the night before. Before I knew it, I was not only crossing the finish line, but also the stage at my convocation to receive my B.S. in Molecular & Cellular Biology. I was unstoppable.

Or so I thought.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

All my life (until now), the answer to that question was always, “a doctor.” Giving that answer and becoming a doctor was second nature to me then, and it seemed like all the aspects of my life also fit into that mold. My mother is a cardiovascular anesthesiologist. My father is an internist. I bathed, fed, and clothed my 90-year-old, handicapped grandmother day in and day out. Furthermore, I identified and accepted the responsibilities of becoming a doctor, such as being on-call many nights a week and going to the hospital every single day of the year, including holidays.

This continued all throughout college. I entered UIUC and completed all the typical pre-med courses. I volunteered as a member of the Illini Emergency Medical Services in addition to the local hospital in the Stepdown and Neonatal Intensive Care Units. I co-founded UIUC’s Be the Match chapter to combat bone marrow-related issues, and became the Recruitment Director for the American Medical Student Association. Outside of medical-related activities, I spearheaded TEDxUIUC and the Philippine Student Association’s largest fundraiser.

I checked all the boxes of a pre-med’s To Do list and was even accepted to a couple of graduate schools. I made sure to dot all my i’s and cross my t’s, so why did I feel like something was missing?

“What do you do for a living?”

Have you ever noticed the previous question changes to this one as you grow older? The person’s state of being, the intrinsic, core component of who they are as an individual, is disregarded and replaced with only their external actions to describe their work.

This disconnect was the root of my problem. Being a doctor did not fully encompass who I was, and just about everyone knows not to become a doctor unless you’re 100% sure about it.

Thus, I reflected over this particular career path and decided to put it on hold.

“What is your search for life?”

As a first generation Filipino-American, I grew up hearing yet another expression. In Tagalog, “hanap buhay” is the phrase used to indicate someone’s profession. In English, this translates to, “the search for life.” Isn’t that so powerful and lovely? Your life’s work should be what makes you feel most alive.

When I said I put becoming a doctor on hold, it felt like my life came to a screeching halt. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college, then hypothetically medical school, residency, and beginning my own practice. But all of that was thrown out of the door. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have a next step to take or rules to follow. It was just me and my unsatiated curiosity.

Some might find that terrifying.
I found it exhilarating.

So what was that elusive x factor a doctor was missing, and how do I go about finding it?

The Search

One of the most important lessons I learned was this: being interested in something does not always mean you are passionate about it, and passion is the key to making you feel alive.

In my last semester of college, one of the courses I greatly enjoyed was ASTR 100: Introduction to Astronomy. As a Molecular & Cellular Biology major, the last chapter, astrobiology, sparked my interest. My professor suggested I take a course on Coursera called The Emergence of Life, which was taught by Dr. Nigel Goldenfeld, the Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute for Universal Biology at UIUC. Additionally, I went above and beyond his advice and read his suggested textbooks from cover to cover.

From afar, this seemed like a perfect fit. I was an undergraduate researcher in a UIUC Department of Microbiology laboratory after all, and I would be able to answer one of NASA’s biggest questions, “Is there life beyond Earth?” But as I considered this career path, I realized I needed to exhaust all the possible career paths that matched my interests before enrolling in arduous commitment such as a PhD program.

NASA Social at the Ames Research Center

I was one of ~25 people to attend the NASA Social for the Ames Research Center’s 75th Anniversary Open House in Mountain View, CA. Since I was exploring career paths in astrobiology, what’s better than going to NASA’s epicenter of life science research? There I toured some of Ames’ facilities before the open house and had some of the most engaging conversations with scientists and engineers.

What I appreciated most about this event was seeing firsthand the mindset and drive of NASA. The famous quote, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” seems so trivial, especially since there are now footprints on the moon (thanks, Margaret Hamilton!) and we’re instead aiming for the stars. NASA is nothing short of phenomenal. It pushes the limits. Scratch that, it has no limits. NASA follows through with ideas most people would consider unimaginable or even crazy with building incredible, tangible devices for Earth and beyond. That’s what I want to be a part of. For once, I pinpointed a passion and felt like this initial spark of interest was becoming more sustainable.

TEDMED Conference

Around this time, I was also able to attend the TEDMED conference in San Francisco, CA through the Front Line Scholarship. When I applied to this event in the spring of last year, I was under the impression the majority of people also attending would be M.D.’s since this was about healthcare and medicine, right? Wrong. Yes, doctors attended, but also a wide spectrum of professors, engineers, consultants, artists, authors, and everything in between. This diversity stimulated and fostered so many different ideas and conversations to tackle the greatest challenges in healthcare. It showed me just how important distinct perspectives are when creating a possible solution, as well as the power we all have as a whole when we come together on issues.

TEDMED was of course filled with the famous 18-minute-long talks we’ve all come to know and love, but half of TEDMED was The Hive, a program promoting the innovations of biotech startups and entrepreneurs. Looking back to my undergraduate career, I naively pigeonholed the embodiment of healthcare to only be composed of healthcare practitioners and insurance companies. The startups at TEDMED were life-changing. They created new technologies or put a unique twist on existing ones in their products to affect not thousands, but millions of patients. Yet another spark gleamed.

From Sparks to Flames

Perhaps the passion of my next career wasn’t just one x factor at NASA or TEDMED, but a combination of x, y, and z (and more) factors:

1. Don’t think outside of the box; think as if the box doesn’t exist.
2. Create new products from ground up and know in detail how it functions.
3. Approach problems logically.
4. Affect a large scope of people and initiate change.
5. Synthesize perspectives of a diverse range of people.

Once I compared and contrasted this future career with becoming a doctor whose job lacked these passions, everything became so clear to me. It wasn’t even an option anymore; I didn’t come this far just to settle. Having a career that incorporates all these aspects was a necessity, but which career was that?

print “Hello, world!”

I came back a different woman each plane ride back to Chicago. I reflected again and again on what made me feel alive at these events and if there were other occasions in my undergraduate career when I felt the same way.

They say your brain solves complex problems as you sleep. I never gave this statement much thought until I dreamt of biotech startups and of established tech companies for a month straight. For once, the black magic of my subconscious nudged me to a clear answer. I want to be at the forefront of innovation by building something new, and becoming a software engineer was the solution.

At my the beginning of my undergraduate career, I loved my two CS courses: Introduction to Programming and Introduction to Computer Science. I regret having a closed mind and not pursuing a CS degree, so I took this matter into my own hands.

Although I haven’t coded in Python or Java for many years, re-learning how to program came naturally to me. I completed the Python, HTML & CSS, Ruby, Javascript, and the Make a Website modules on Code Academy fairly quickly. Coursera became my best friend. I loved finding data from a simple .txt file of ACGT’s in the Bioinformatics Algorithms course and navigating though game logic and building the interface for different games in the Interactive Python courses. Needless to say, I earned Distinction in both and was hungry for more.

Although I increased my programming skills greatly online, I felt my education was hindered by constantly waiting for courses to start (or even schedule a start date). Two courses I was greatly looking forward to beginning were pushed back to over a month. I didn’t want my learning to stagnate, and so I began researching software engineer bootcamps.

Hackbright Academy

I practically memorized Thinkful’s Bootcamp Finder when doing my research on which program would be best for me. So many questions buzzed through my mind. Should I aim to be full stack engineer, a data scientist, or go into mobile development? What language and framework should I learn? What are the differences in the program structure itself? What is my optimal learning environment? Where is each located? What else should I be considering?

I thought I would have trouble deciding which program to apply to, but only one truly stood out to me: Hackbright Academy’s Software Engineering Fellowship.

Hackbright Academy is the leading software engineering school for women founded in San Francisco in 2012. The academy graduates more female engineers than Stanford and UC Berkeley each year.

There’s honestly nothing about Hackbright I didn’t love. This 10–12 week, all women’s fellowship had an amazing student:mentor ratio, as well as an impressive list of partner companies. I felt confident the individualized career services and the optional two weeks would jumpstart my way as a fully prepared software developer. The overall >90% success rate speaks for itself. In addition, tech talks and field trips would sharpen my skills and cultivate my knowledge of both established and emerging spaces in the industry.

I was daunted by the fact that Hackbright’s acceptance rate was similar to Harvard’s, but I took the plunge and applied anyway. Hackbright processed my application and the following steps of my interviews much more quickly than I expected, and before long, I received the best email in my inbox:

Forged from the Flames

“It is iron that fills your heart and sits in your veins. And what is iron, really, unless it’s forged?” — n.t.

Some may think dwelling on the past is useless, but it’s times like these when looking backwards propels me forward. Closed chapters are still part of open books, are they not? My challenges have been the stepping stones of this unparalleled path to where I am, and who I am, today. You may not know me now, but tomorrow, you will.

I am resilient.
I am alive.