I spend 10 hours/day learning to?code

My life adventures have included mountain climbing, world travel, and a half ironman. I’m only 2 weeks into my latest adventure and it is far harder than all of those combined.

My latest adventure includes sitting in a chair for hours on end, staring into a screen of gibberish until you’re about to fall asleep, and going through a roller coaster of thoughts ranging from “I understand this perfectly,” to five minutes later, “I know absolutely nothing about anything in the world,” to “What is a brain? Why don’t I have one?”

This adventure is a 15 week intensive software engineering program at Flatiron School. I’m doing this along with continuing work at TINT/Filestack. My days are jam packed (typically starting about 5am) and exhausting, but I’ve actually been able to have higher output focusing on the most important tasks that allow me to be successful in each endeavor.

I chose to go to coding school for a few reasons:

1. My experiences are all over the place: hotels, startups, marketing, digital signage, finance, business development. One glaring area I found missing was technology. I have a high level understanding of technical concepts, but applying those concepts into useful outputs was a gap I wanted to fill. 
2. TINT was acquired in September. I was a bit burnt out from 4 years at a startup and needed to make sure I was giving myself the best shot at continued happiness and growth. I’m grateful for our new parent company’s willingness to allow me learn a new skillset while still working.
3. I like building things. I’ve always loved putting things together without instructions. I’ve tried this method of “no instructions” with coding, but have been unsuccessful. I needed an in-person, full-time bootcamp to immerse myself and allow myself to suffer through hours on end of brute forcing my way to solutions.

Why Flatiron School?

I chose Flatiron School because it had a great reputation, but more importantly, I chose this over some other programs because Flatiron made me realize that I wasn’t just a client, I was a part of a family.

This was a main decision factor because of my time at TINT and the culture that our three cofounders Tim, Nik, and Ryo created. I am proud to have been a part of such a special culture and honored that I was given the opportunity to be a part of it seeing the many highs and a few lows of the company through it’s acquisition. Three similarities I see between TINT and Flatiron School are:

• Feel cared for
• Transparency
• Shared enthusiasm

It is hard to put into words how positively my life was affected at TINT and I owe so much of who I am today to that experience. If my experience becoming a software engineer at Flatiron School is 10% as good, it will be a huge success. So far, the culture and experience have not disappointed.

When I told some people that I was planning to go to coding school I was mostly met with confusion by people outside of my family. People didn’t think I was a coder and couldn’t see why I didn’t put my time to other tasks. A few people recommended I rethink my decision. 

However, for the people that knew me most and know my ambitions and interests, it was a predictable step. Up until 5 years ago, I spent a lot of my academic life enjoying math, physics, and STEM. I originally wanted to be an engineer before randomly finding a magazine that talked about a college in Switzerland, realizing that school only offered Hotel Management as a major, and then proceeding to research and fall in love with the hospitality industry. “Bye for now STEM”.

Now that I’ve had my taste of hospitality and a few other experiences (hey Giving Bag), worked around the world at amazing hotels, and enjoyed every second of my current career, I’m looking for my next challenge and growth area. Software engineering is that adventure!

What’s next?

Not a clue! There are a lot of options that I’m continuing to explore. Some include starting my own company, going back to previous roles with my new skills, becoming a Chief of Staff, being a full time software engineer, or most likely a combination of all those! 

My mind is open to possibilities. I am a naturally curious and intellectually hungry individual. I anticipate that the skills I learn will continue to excite me and continue to open up new areas that I’ll want to explore.

loop do

puts “Keep on smiling”

end