Cohort Stories: Meet Sabrina
vo. 3, no. 14 — guest post by Sabrina Minaya
Personally, I started being interesting in technology when I was 19 years old. At that time, my father showed me how he was developing a sales program for a liquor store. I was fascinated by how he created a program that can search items, check the inventory of any item, calculate the total amount sold by the store, etc. My passion for technology grew when I started to watch videos of C++ programming. After watching many tutorial videos, I started to build simple programs such as a tic tac to game, a hangman game, and a student record system.
The biggest challenge that I’ve had to overcome has been learning English. This does not only happen to me, but also to many immigrants who decide to move to the United States trying to make the American dream come true. Particularly, when I moved to the United States, I didn’t understand anything a people were saying in the streets. I felt embarrassed and powerless.
I got nervous every time that I went to the mall or supermarket alone, so I decided to register at Bunker Hill Community College, where they were offering an ESL program to learn how to speak, write, and read in English. Over four months, my English was improving little by little.
Finally, when I finished the ESL courses, I started to take regular classes for Computer Science students. Notably, BHCC has been served as my principal motivation to achieve my dreams. For instance, BHCC has helped me to start my career and acquire my college diploma. Also, they encouraged me to participate in Hack.Diversity, which helps Black and Latinos work in the innovation economy of Boston.
My dream job is to be a Programmer. I desire to be part of a progressive organization that will provide many opportunities to obtain new technical skills and contribute to my professional growth and success. I’m excited that Hack.Diversity gave me the opportunity to proficient in problem-solving techniques and recognizing the broad relevance of computational thinking in every life, as well as its applicability within other fields.
