The Beginning:

I am transitioning from a nineteen year career in speech-language pathology to software engineering. It was not an easy decision to leave behind a fulfilling career but I love to learn and take on big challenges. After a lot of research, interviews, and applications, I eventually decided to attend DigitalCraft's full-time web development program.

How I Got Here:

This decision did not come easily and did not happen overnight. Twenty years ago, I ran a junky html-only website as a way for my friends and I to continue with a fantasy football contest that we started in college. This was back in the computer stone age when you had to figure out points by hand and you couldn’t host your league on a website like CBS or Yahoo. I loved the weekly challenge of getting the website updated and ready to publish at the start of each week. In addition, every week I would try to add an extra feature to improve the site’s look and functionality. Eventually, life happened and we all got too busy to continue with the fantasy football league. However, I never forgot how much I enjoyed creating and updating the website.

Fast forward to COVID and I found myself with extra time at home and kiddos old enough to be learning the basics of coding in school. I started thinking about how I wanted to spend the next chapters of my work life. I recalled my first experience in website development and decided to take another look into programming. I started by taking the CompTIA IT Fundamentals course to get a general feel for computers overall. I then took a few Udemy courses on Python, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I fell in love with the problem solving and challenge of coding. So much so that I decided to jumpstart my learning, take the plunge, and attend a bootcamp.

The Future:

So, starting on January 10th and until May 4th, I will be trying to learn all things coding. I looked into different coding bootcamps and I think I landed in the perfect space for me. Our class is very small with only six members. My instructor is young, energetic, and has several years experience working as a software engineer. The overall community of DigitalCrafts is supportive, positive, and passionate about learning. All of my classmates have been helpful and appear to be very motivated to make sure we all get through this together. I am eager to get started on my new career.

What About You?

I would love to hear about your journey. What inspired you to get into software development? Are you self taught, attended college, or did you go to a coding bootcamp? What kind of projects do you enjoy creating?

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