Best Decision I’ve Ever Made
I have just finished writing my last line of code for my last final exam of the semester and this marked the end of my third term in Computer Science. It has been an incredible journey getting to this point and I have never felt luckier.
Just over three years ago, I finished my first degree and upon graduation, I was more lost than I was when I started; I had no idea what career I wanted to pursue. However, one thing was certain; I knew I wanted to get into the tech industry and at that time, I never would have imagined that I would have done it as a software engineer
Up until this point, my experience with programming was limited to a notoriously difficult “Programming with C” course at my university and MATLAB. Although I did enjoy programming with C and my grade proved that, I was extremely intimidated by programming and so I did not think it would be the right job for me. So during that summer, I began my job hunt for any tech-related entry level jobs.
A few weeks passed and I got extremely lucky; I landed a job as a entry level, technical recruiter with a very interesting company. The company was a third-party recruitment agency and I had the great opportunity to work with some of the most interesting start-ups in Toronto. It was a huge learning curve when I first began. I had to understand terms like “DevOps” and “Kubernetes” and I had to learn quickly. If I was to be an effective recruiter, I needed to have a general sense what all these technologies were used for.
Several months passed. I started becoming more confident in my job and started gaining a better sense of the requirements for various roles and where to look for potential candidates. As my confidence in my skills started to blossom, so did my interest in programming.
My favorite part of the day became the time that I spent talking to software engineers about their current role and their past experiences. Having finished an engineering degree, I enjoy problem solving and every software engineer I spoke to had very interesting experiences to share; either about their side-projects, an interesting challenge they solved at work or why they love the language they use. I started to become more and more fascinated by programming itself.
After work, I started to teach myself to code. I would usually hang-out in coffee-shops and study Java using this course and I would also study front-end development using freeCodeCamp.
During my time as a recruiter and I spoke to several self-taught software engineers who had landed awesome jobs after a year or two of self-learning and I thought I would follow in their footsteps. It was tough. Most days of the week, I would study 3–4 hours after my job. I was making progress, but not at the rate that I wanted to. I knew, that if was to acquire a solid skill-set, I would have to dedicate myself to it entirely, I started to explore other avenues in addition to self-learning. I had considered going to college for a two-year program, I thought about doing a programming bootcamp and even about taking part-time courses at a university; I never would have imagined that I would have enrolled in another bachelor’s degree program; but to say I’m glad I did, would be a huge understatement.
I was very lucky!
I was very lucky that I was able to even get into the program. Computer Science is an incredibly competitive program to get into and I am very grateful that my university accepted my application. I am glad that I had the opportunity to go back to school; I had no dependents and there was nothing that was stopping me. Also, my parents always supported me and encouraged getting a higher education (even if I was doing it a second time). Two years have passed since I made that decision and it was the…
best decision I’ve ever made!
And the reason I say this is because although I just finished writing my last line of code for this semester, the thing that excites me the most about this upcoming winter break is that I will have lots of time to write code for my personal project.
