My Why

Growing up I never really had an idea of what I wanted to do as a career. My parents were always working no matter what day it was, as my mom had started transitioning out of her job as a programmer to be involved in real estate and my dad was working his job at Sun Microsystems while helping her. So I spent a lot of free time at home and playing sports. I used most of that time at home playing computer games or reading random forums on the internet. Because of that I leaned towards the idea of learning how to make games. My parents were able to enroll me in a local summer program that showed you the basics of game development, and that summer I quickly learned the process wasn’t as rosy as I had imagined. After learning that I never really approached the idea of going deeper and learning what was going on behind the screen.

That changed a bit after I got involved with a group online that dedicated a lot of time and effort in using their skills as programmers to find various ways to make extra money online. I became useful to the group despite not having any coding knowledge by having a good grasp of certain games and helping with maintaining support for their user base. Working with them showed that there was a way to combine my love for games and newly started interest in programming, even if it wasn’t exactly the way I had originally thought. Unfortunately younger me never had a good grasp on work and school ethic, so despite my continued involvement with them I never learned beyond the basics that I had been taught before.

My involvement with them and the fact that nearly everyone I knew was studying programming or worked in the field ended up guiding my choice into enrolling into college as a software engineer even though I still wasn’t sure if it was something I wanted to do. A year and a half into studying, I got an offer from a family friend to help them with their boba shop as I had worked at a well known shop part time. I quickly took the offer as I was losing my mind trying to study with severe attention issues. I put everything I could into making the business grow. I ended up taking on a lot more responsibilities than I wanted and was spending 70+ hours weekly working as a result. It took awhile for me to realize that it had completely taken over my life in an unhealthy way.

I decided to leave it behind and focus on myself again. With that decision in mind, I tried to figure out what would be a good way to get back into learning programming. I already knew that I didn’t want to go back to a traditional schooling setting as it hadn’t meshed well with me. That’s how I ended up enrolling in Flatiron.