Cohort Stories: Meet Kimberly
vol. 4, no. 41 — guest post by Kimberly Wilkes
My dad bought a computer when I was little. I’ll never forget the excitement and terror brought on by connecting to the internet with AOL. Ever since he brought in that computer, I was on it every chance I got. I would play The Sims and all sorts of website games. I continued to play video games on all different consoles and was always excited when we had computer time in school where I got to practice keyboarding skills and have a greater appreciation for the Internet. When Neopets, MySpace, and Xanga were the most popular things on the internet I got into HTML/CSS with the help of the many layout generators out there at the time.
Despite all of the video games and website layout tweaking, I didn’t think to really dive deep into technology until long after college. I had always enjoyed designing solutions to problems and had always dreamed of making my own website for my creative efforts. I began looking into online courses through Udemy and a number of other ed-tech resources while I was between jobs substitute teaching. I didn’t fully commit to a career in technology until a friend in software engineering saw my potential and recommended I make the switch.
Making the career change to software engineering was largely motivated by my own desire to have those “Eureka!” moments again. When I was teaching, getting students to that point was always one of the best parts of the job. While I certainly had those moments for myself as well, I didn’t feel like it matched up to what my students felt.
The tech industry offers those “Eureka!” moments time and time again through the seemingly infinite number of ways people can solve a problem. There’s always so much to learn and that you can do with programming.
I’m not sure I know what a dream job is anymore. I know that my dream environment would be anywhere I feel I can grow in my professional goals. I am looking for somewhere I am comfortable supporting others, and am able to achieve my own personal goals in a happy work/life balance. Those magical words felt so impossible before, and feel a lot more real and within my grasp since making the career switch.
