Finding Myself
Today was the most exciting day of my life (well actually, I lied — it falls just behind the day I got married). As of this morning, I have officially started my journey in becoming a Full Stack Web Developer.
When I told everyone I was quitting my job to go to code school, the number one response was “what, why?” I assure you, this day has been a long time coming, and my career change was not a decision I came upon lightly. Over the last 12 months, I’ve spent much of my time contemplating what the heck I was going to do for the rest of my life. I wondered if I was always going to roll into the office every Monday morning dreading the rest of the week. For the past five years, my professional life was spent in healthcare, and my feelings for the industry always fell short — short of satisfaction and passion. I was dissatisfied, disinterested, disassociated. I always felt there was a missing link, but I never knew what that link was until about six months ago.
My husband is a UI/UX Developer/Designer and he too went through a vigorous three-month code boot camp in Raleigh, NC. It changed his life and now it’s changing mine. He opened my eyes to what it was like to love what you do, and he encouraged me to try the interactive courses on codecademy.com. So I did, and I finally found myself intrigued in what I was doing again. After that came the Intro to Ruby course, powered by Flatiron School, and that’s when I decided I wanted to code full-time. After some recent life events, I was finally pushed to put in my two weeks and go after my dream. After all, life is too short to not LOVE your job.
I don’t want to completely leave health care. I can’t tell you right now if I can’t let it go because I’ve already spent all this time and money towards a career in health care, or if it’s because a part of me really loves it. All I know is that the health care industry alone just wasn’t doing it for me. Hopefully I’ll come out of Flatiron School with a career in bioinformatics or working for a startup in the health care tech space. Either way, I’m excited for this new adventure. Scared out of my mind…but excited.
