From Cosmetics to Coding

Julia Dufresne — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 13:44:52 +0000

Hello World!

My name’s Julia, but I like to be called Jules!

I am a current student at Juno College in the Web Development Immersive Bootcamp.

Want to know how I got here? Let’s rewind a bit 👇

Back in 2012, I got my first job in cosmetics. I was a makeup artist at a beauty counter, and I absolutely loved it. What drove me, was knowing that I got to help people feel confident and teach them to practice a little bit of self care.

Eventually, I had to choose what to study in College. The only familiar thing to me at that point, was the cosmetic industry. I decided I wanted to expand my knowledge and my current skill set, and pursued a diploma in Esthetics.

Jules in front of an F18 Aircraft in Moose Jaw, Sasksatchewan

After completing one year of post-secondary education, I decided to take some time off and move to Saskatchewan with my partner. What an amazing experience that was - I got the chance to do something completely different, and work as ground-crew on a Royal Canadian Air Force base, and in the Military Family Resource Centre. These opportunities took me right out of my comfort zone, and showed me that there is so much out there in the world to experience, and sometimes it isn’t best to always “go with what you know”.

Eventually, we came back to Toronto and I decided to finish my diploma in Esthetics, as I only had one year left. I knew I had a blossoming curiosity for what else was out there, but I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what I wanted to do differently.

Fast forward - I got my first position as an Esthetician in a spa. I connected some more dots, and decided that I wanted to pursue a position in Management. I was intrigued about much went into running a successful business, and I wanted to do what I could to help the team and the spa flourish. This lead me to an opportunity to work for a B2B company that focused on importing and distributing cosmetics. I couldn’t turn it down as it fed my curiosity to continuously learn about all aspects of the industry. My primary role was purely administrative - a little bit of this and a little bit of that. However, I was quickly given the opportunity to take over a marketing role and become the Content Designer and Developer. I spent my all my free time teaching myself how to create successful email, digital and printable marketing materials. As a team, we started looking into updating our website and adding an e-commerce section. I was tasked with researching our options through third party agencies and creating/collecting inspiration for our new design. This - is where my life changed.

Everyone can code!

I went down a rabbit hole of researching how websites are built, e-commerce, design and email marketing - the whole bit of it. I have never been so excited about a project - I really wanted to understand what went into making these applications.

I decided to take some free online courses, starting with FreeCodeCamp. I read HTML & CSS: Design and Build Web Sites and JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development by John Duckett. I subscribed to Developers and Designers on YouTube, bookmarked Medium and Dev.To to learn about in demand technologies and a11y, and joined Twitter to connect with other developers in the community.

It has been about a year since I started coding, and I feel like I finally found my community, and the type of work that I am passionate about. I am so thankful for my career journey before tech, because without it, I don't think I would have been exposed to coding. Funny how things always work out how they're supposed to, hey?

At last, we come full circle. After tons of research (you wouldn’t believe how much research), about the best way I could go about becoming a full-fledged Developer, I found Juno College (at the time, HackerYou). I've been sold from the minute I walked through those doors, that this was the right move. Juno College provides the education, community, and support that guides their students on the right path.

Now we are here, Week 1 of Bootcamp is complete and I am lost for words as to how amazing this journey has been so far. I have already learned so much, and I can't wait to continuously build skills and relationships in this new-to-me industry. I am a Developer now - I can say I'm proud of myself, right? 👏

Here’s to 2020, the year of taking chances!

DEV Community: Julia Dufresne

From Cosmetics to Coding