I always felt uncomfortable with writing about my journey and the current progress I have made so far, but I think the time has come to talk about it. Here goes! 💪
Photo by Hello Lightbulb on Unsplash
2016-2017
I came back from teaching English overseas and was at a crossroads of what I wanted to do. I had some time and found RPG Maker online, and decided to pick it up.
At the same time, I was looking into learning how to program so I signed up for a certificate of Software Development at a local university, and a Teaching English as a Second Language certificate at another university. One course in Software Development was way harder and more time consuming than the three courses I was taking for TESL, so I put the courses on hold until 2017 when I was done the TESL certificate.
While doing the TESL certificate, I was experimenting with game development in Unity and attended game nights to try out other people's projects and learn about the world of game development.
Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash
2017-2020
The TESL course ended, and I got a summer job teaching international students English at a summer camp. The job itself didn't pan out as I wanted it to, with even students telling me I should consider a career in IT or development.
I resumed the Software Development certificate and it was extremely challenging for me, as I did not have a strong problem solving abilities or strong math skills prior to taking it. However, my drive to learn along with classmates encouraging me to continue did help me to progress. I also joined a university club because I thought being around smart computer people would help me improve my understanding of computer science and help my drive for completing the certificate.
During this time, I learned a lot about general topics such as networking, mobile app development, data structures, etc. I even participated in hackathons and game jams; we won third place in one hackathon and won first prize in another along with a team of individuals I met the same day, and second place in the first ever game jam I participated in.
In 2018, I had a job as a QA tester for video games which was an eye opener for learning the game development scene. It was a great experience and met a lot of people, but I realized through the process that the game development field was not for me, so I got my first job as a web developer at the start of 2019.
Unfortunately, that job lasted only a week. I didn't know what I was doing, and a bunch of other internal issues I faced did not prepare me for the task at hand which made me useless and essentially dead weight. I decided I needed some time to learn more.
Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash
2020
On graduating from the certificate, I managed to get another job through a job fair I technically was not supposed to have access to because it was only for software engineering students. Somehow, I talked my way into being able to enter stating the vague participation requirements.
The job I got through the fair seemed great at first, but looking back I was not mentally prepared to work in an office setting just yet. The people were extremely smart and talented, and I felt like I was overcompensating my skills and felt severe imposter syndrome. I was bad at taking feedback because I felt I needed to know everything already so I was refusing the help. Also, it definitely did not help since the pandemic started and it was hard to ask for help in person.
Unfortunately, this job lasted only a month. It did taught me a lot of things: how I failed with communicating with a team and at sharing decision making, and how I lacked creative coding and designing from mockups. This prompted me to do a graphic design certificate at an old college I used to go to.
2020-2021
I learned a lot through this program that was not highlighted by the software development program I did; primarily communication, team work, and designing effectively. The communication and feedback was something other people noticed I had issues with and I was defensive at first, but as time went by, I felt it was much easier to collaborate and share the responsibility of a project/design.
Outside of general social skills for projects, I learned best practice for UI and UX, core design principles and different tools for creative projects.
Once this program was done, I was hunting for both graphic designer jobs and front end development positions. One friend suggested a company that was providing an internship for six months. However, the age cap was 30, and I was already 30 turning 31 the next week. Luckily, they sped the process up and I got the job.
Photo by Jose Losada on Unsplash
2021-2022
I just recently finished the internship but it was definitely a great learning experience; being thrown onto a project that had little to no documentation, no codebase, and a low-code solution that was broken almost all the time.
I managed to organize and complete about 70% of the project along with detailed documentation and flowchart (loosely based on UML) diagrams, instructions for the developer and regular users to use the internal tools. I collaborated with a UI/UX designer along with the customer support manager and CEO to conceptualize functionality and design of new features to be added.
Being the main person in charge of communicating with the customer support of the low-code platform, I often relayed information needed for other services being used under the same corporate umbrella, or helped with other internal projects using the same system.
What now?
I am currently self-studying and working on understanding concepts I'm unfamiliar with, while building a portfolio and job hunting. I can't wait for the next steps in my career as it's been one crazy journey so far, and looking forward to many, many more! 😃
If you're interested in seeing some of the work I've done so far after reading this post, feel free to check out my portfolio. Thanks for reading!
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