Intro to My Tech Journey: The Journey is Not Linear pt. 1

Idong Essien — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 03:21:49 +0000

Okay, so boom. For most, me included, this journey is surely not linear. By popular demand I am going to open up about my own journey. For anybody that knows me, this has been long overdue, innit?

Because of the nature of my current role, I constantly have the opportunity to connect with so many folks from various backgrounds. Some frequent recurring questions I get come in varying forms of, “Can you tell me about your journey?”. For context, the bulk of folks that ask me this question are people that are currently hoping to eventually land in a tech oriented career themselves. Which means they are using my response — as someone who seems to have made it — to gauge whether their own transition will be worth it or not?

I should probably note that I consider myself a newbie to the tech space as well, a few times over. I guess I should elaborate. Well here it goes. I have held two positions as a Software Developer since graduating from a coding bootcamp in February of 2021. Before that bootcamp I had tried learning how to code — time, after time, after time.

Short story long — all through high school and even afterwards I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. My father suggested accounting, I said, “Okay”. Pretty sure the idea came from the fact that three of my cousins on my father’s side went the accounting route. So, I took father’s suggestion and enrolled in a local community college for accounting. Laugh. Out. Loud.

It was not going well for me at all. I attended instructor office hours, I attended study sessions with classmates, I did the homework, signed up for tutoring — I could not hang. A Couple semesters in I received a letter warning me about my impending doom. If I did not get it together I was getting put on academic probation. Guess who got put on academic probation? Yeah, this guy.

So what happened next, you asked? No, for real, are you asking?

Okay so boom, and I am about to age myself here, but, I remember sitting in the Admissions office flipping through a course catalog — yes, a physical, paperback, catalog. I landed on the computer science section and as I skimmed through the class descriptions — and I may be totally making this part up but — my eyes lit up. For one of the first times in my life (see what I did there?) I think I finally found something that caught my interest.

I enrolled in that Computer Science concentration. I attended those Computer Science classes. I failed those Computer Science classes. Oh, you were starting to think things were looking up for me, huh? Bro, I failed out of community college. A lot of folks would probably take a hint by now and think something like, “Okay maybe college is not for me?”, and go figure something else out for their life. No, not me, not this guy. I don’t do hints easily, I do not know, I am slow sometimes.

Okay, all jokes aside. One thing I will say about myself is that I am resilient, when I am convinced of something. In this case all I knew was I needed to somehow complete a college education. One thing mother always said was that if I do not get it together, I will be watching my siblings all finish school and move on with their lives while I sit in regret. Those words have never stopped playing in the back of my head, even until now.

So yeah, my GPA was shot. It proved difficult to enroll in any other colleges or universities. Much of what happened during that time was a blur, life happened. I never gave up though. Years passed and I ended up enrolling in an accelerated technical college. This was a blessing because this particular institution did not consider previous GPAs, but did consider previous course credits.

This was a time in my life I genuinely enjoyed. I believe that both the change of scenery as well as the teaching approach at this institute, played a major part in successfully obtaining my Associates in Science in Web Design Technology. I did not have to take any math course that was more advanced than basic algebra. Nor were there any other fluff courses to take. All the learning was hands-on and web development centered.

You all, I have finally found my passion. I enjoyed myself so much there that even after classes let out, I remained in the computer labs until closing. Then, I went home and jumped on my computer some more until late into the night. I loved what I was learning. The technology I was exposed to during this time included; HTML, CSS, ActionScript, Adobe Dreamweaver, Notepad++ and Adobe Photoshop.

With all the previously mentioned technology, I learned some foundational front-end web development and design. Spent two years building a portfolio then having to demo it in order to successfully obtain my Associates in Science in Web Design Technology. I also built up my GPA to a wonderful 3.49. However, folks, the journey is never linear is it?

It came time to decide if I wanted to register to continue to a Bachelor’s programme. Unfortunately for me, none existed for my concentration. Here we go, rest in peace to my momentum. Fast forwarding through stuff irrelevant to this story, my newly acquired excellent GPA allowed me to get accepted into a number of universities.

I enrolled in a university in the next town over from my hometown. This is where my journey gets interesting. Let me try to walk you through my thought processes. I started with a concentration in Computer Science. Statistics and Physics classes, what are those?! I transferred to an Interactive Media concentration, it was more similar to the classes I took at the previous institute. However, Computer Science is the way of the traditional Software Engineer, right?

I convinced myself I needed to smarten up and just get tutored through physics and stats classes. It did not work out, sorry not sorry. Transferred back to Interactive Media. Wait, what? An outside internship is required to graduate, what are those?! Let’s see, does Computer Science require an internship to graduate? No? I transferred back to Computer Science. With all that back and forth I somehow made it through junior year.

The time has come to register for classes only to find out that — all that back and forth, not to mention the expensive previous institute I went to, that and the time wasted or spent at the community college before that — I had exhausted all available state and federal undergraduate loans and grants. I had to pay my senior year out of pocket, not only that, but after earning a certain amount of credits, one can no longer live in on campus housing. The journey is not linear, is it?

I sought and secured housing off campus. I started working full-time with the intention of paying my way through my remaining semesters. Money instead went to my rent, car, and other responsibilities. Before I knew it, much time had passed and tuition piled high enough to where I was discouraged to bother trying to pay it. One cannot register for classes if tuition is not paid, oh and we will suspend access to your transcript too. The journey is not linear, is it?

Time passed, school no longer was my priority but I still thought about it from time to time. Then my siblings started graduating from their schools, then they started getting married, then they started having kids. Laugh. Out. Loud. Mother warned me this was going to happen. I continued with my many jobs and in pursuit of better pay without having to overwork myself, I found gig work — transportation, food delivery, etcetera.

Except I was kidding myself. I was still working long hours and making mediocre pay. I was frustrated with my life. Then in 2019, November into December, I got sick with what I now know was my first case of covid. Unable to work I had time to really sit down and ponder life.

I wanted a change so badly, I wanted to finish my education. The only thing I knew I enjoyed was coding. Though I was not in school for a while, I would still dabble with coding intermittently. However I needed direction, accountability, discipline and more. Around this time some rabbit holes led me to learn more about careers in Software Engineering and an avenue into such careers — coding bootcamps.

My curiosity was sparked again as I started figuring that bootcamp may be my ticket to finishing what I started and landing a career in something I enjoyed so much that it kept me at my computer late into the night. I applied to many bootcamps but enrolled in two. One, I enrolled in because it had a campus location local to me. They gave me the opportunity to tour their facilities and there, I was sold on the idea of bootcamp as an ideal alternative method of skilling up.

The second, I enrolled in because they advertised living stipends. Guess which one I followed through with? Yeah, living stipends! However, I am going to end it here because I think my actual bootcamp experience and how I landed my first job afterwards would be great content for another couple of blog posts.

I hope this reaches the audience it is meant for and that it helps whoever has the time to read it.

Until next time.

Rabbits!

Idong Essien — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 02:40:23 +0000

I was always an inquisitive person. In a room full of people, I’m the person observing the person that is observing other people. My younger brother would always take things apart - toys, electronics, those kinds of things - and always managed to figure out how to put those things back together. Then when no one is looking I’ll go and do what I saw my brother doing.

So behind closed doors I would always tinker with things too. The difference between myself and my younger brother is that the majority of the time I wouldn’t know how to put those things back together. When mom got mad, I’d say, “he did it”.

I mention all of that to illustrate my natural curiosity with things - how they work, what makes them tick. I remember one particular world being so appealing and new to me - programming, writing lines of code. I blame MySpace. While people were busy going back and forth about why they’re not on somebody’s top 8, I was busy trying to figure out how people were getting glitter, DC, Marvel backgrounds and other things on their profiles.

I could have just been experiencing FOMO, all I know is some intense curiosity sparked and I needed to learn how to do what they’re doing. I can’t remember but knowing me I probably googled, “myspace edit” or “customize myspace” and now I’m seeing things like; code snippets and tutorials for your profile header, etcetera. Among those, I’m seeing terms like, “html”, “css”, “href”. Now I’m googly eyed, looking at all this - asking, “what is all of this?”.

Rabbits! If you’ve ever watched them scurry off, they zig-zag, and pretty swiftly. I was doing that, but on Google. W3Schools, Codecademy, freeCodeCamp, edabit, udemy, courses on Youtube - I started on all of them! Anything that mentioned HTML or CSS, I bookmarked. In fact, the bookmarks are all still there, in my favourites folder, on the bookmarks bar.

W3Schools is the one I started with. Instead of jumping from one resource to another, I decided to try and stick with them. I remember going through their HTML and CSS courses multiple times, intermittently. Also went through their PHP course because I later got introduced to Wordpress. I wasn’t learning these things efficiently, I was excited that I was learning them though.

How do I know that I loved it? It quickly got to a point that anytime I sat down to learn more about this world - especially on days that I was not working, maybe snubbing my responsibilities - I would be at the computer literally all day, and late into the night. I would be on one resource, it would mention another technology or language I’ve not heard about and now I’m dropping what I’m doing and taking off to go learn more about the new thing that was just mentioned.

There is always something new to learn and I think that is part of what makes this stuff exciting. There is no such thing as repetition here. It’s like you’re constantly putting together a puzzle. There are so many different ways to solve one problem. Learning to code is like unlocking a superpower. I’ve tried Wix, I’ve tried Squarespace and even as powerful as Wordpress is - knowing how to code, knowing how things work behind the scenes, even just knowing the fundamentals, unlocks a world of total creative freedom. You can’t tell me that’s not awesome. We’ve not even mentioned the number of things being created now, and the things that have yet to be created.

I’ve matured a little bit, in all my “rabbit hole’ing”. And it’s led me to places like NEIT in Rhode Island, where I went to get my Associates in Web Design, then later, Lambda School, an online, Full-Stack Web Development + Computer Science bootcamp that I just graduated from. And then Career Karma who I now work for part-time, coaching and mentoring others whose curiosity for tech have also been sparked. And now wanting to make a career out of learning to code, learning technology - applying to jobs for what would potentially be my first Software Engineering role.

Thanks for reading, pray for me, wish me luck, don't give up.

DEV Community: Idong Essien

Intro to My Tech Journey: The Journey is Not Linear pt. 1

Rabbits!