My Journey to Programming
Upon my virtual graduation from college, I felt lost. I had my history degree, but I wasn’t sure what the post-COVID world had in store for me. The discipline of history spoke to my innate desire for “truth.” I wanted to know how the world used to be so that I could improve my own life and the lives of those around me in the present. And boy did I learn a lot about the way things used to be. But when it came time to put my new found knowledge to use I felt more constrained than empowered. All of my looking backward in time to provide answers in the here and now left me wanting — wanting to create, to build, to look ahead, to hone a skill that could produce real and immediate impacts. The demands of being a history major had revealed a different side of me, a side that wanted to produce results rather than search for them in archives. And so, after graduating I slowly began to embrace this unexplored part of my psyche.
An old guitar served as a gateway to exploring my newly-discovered creative side. In brushing off the dust and plucking a few notes, I found a sense of enjoyment that I hadn’t ever experienced in the course of my academic work. I had learned to play the piano some years prior, and had taught myself a song or two every now and then throughout college, so figuring out the music theory did not prove too challenging. I practiced guitar for hours on end, and profoundly enjoyed the process of learning a new new chord, a new scale, and then a new song. Once I had a few scales under my belt I began improvising with a few backing tracks. Improvising is one of my favorite things to practice to this day.
As I improved in my musical abilities, I set my sights on the music industry in search of a career. I joined a band, and enrolled in online classes through the Berklee School of Music. I enjoyed the classes, my classmates, my professors, and the band. I was learning so much about music I loved. And while music offered me a way of positively impacting both myself and those around me, I felt almost too free — the path before me seemed almost too open. There were so many roads I could take, so many professions to choose from within the music industry. Part of me yearned for at least some of the structure that my time in academia had provided. In pursuing this goal of becoming a professional musician, I learned the importance of striking a balance between my structured, analytical, evidence gathering side and my free-spirited, creative, artistic side. I now longed for a discipline that existed between these two realms that simultaneously afforded me the opportunity to engage with others in a meaningful and positive way. I am not suggesting that this balance does not exist within the study of history or music, different individuals can find the appropriate balance between structure and freedom in nearly any endeavor. But for me, that balance simply wasn’t there.
Finding The Right Balance Through Programming
My first real exposure to programming was in college - an introductory course in Java. Despite a heavy courseload, I actually ended up enjoying the course, that is, until my other departmental history courses started assigning more and more work later in the semester. With the increased demands of my other non-computer science courses I began to fall behind in my Java class. Looking back, I actually enjoyed my Java class more than any history course, but once I started slipping in this programming course I got a nasty case of imposter syndrome. “I was never a math wiz. I could never be a programmer,” I thought to myself. “Everyone else is cruising through this while I’m stuck trying to understand the basics.” It was this flawed mindset that led me to discard the possibility of a programming career and stick to a discipline I felt more comfortable in.
Fast forward three years. I have finished college and have just completed a test run of what it might be like to work in the music industry. In my downtime, I start perusing Coursera in search of a new topic to learn about. I notice that one of the free courses on the site happens to be the very same Java class I took in college. I decide to give it another shot. Without the stress of other courses, I take the time to really dig into the material. I begin chatting with some other virtual students, which leads me to explore other free coding resources online. With my new and improved perspective on the type of work that motivates me, I realize that programming strikes the right balance between structure and freedom for me. It offers a degree of academic rigor that keeps me engaged while allowing for a level of creativity that makes the day-to-day practice of programming truly enjoyable. I am able to see how programmers can alter and traverse the digital landscape to directly impact people from around the world, which brings me to the present day…
Thanks to the support of my family and software developer friends, I am currently in Phase 3 of the Flatiron School’s software engineering bootcamp. I feel at home in the software engineering community. Everyone is navigating the same digital space, moving toward the development of a better tomorrow. Each day new technology is released that changes how we, software engineers, work — bringing the community even closer together. Yet despite the shared programming languages and structural frameworks there remains ample space for creativity. Each individual has different workflows, different ways of approaching a problem, and different visions of what the future holds. I am excited to have chosen the programming path, and I am excited to use my software engineering skills to improve my life and the lives of those around me. It took me a few years to get here, but I have come to appreciate my journey and the value of the “middle ground” I never knew existed.
