Putting things into perspective
As a child I couldn’t get enough of the yellowed, mildew-scented, pages of ’50s era, Nancy Drew books and mystery video games. I found that these outlets satiated my craving for creative problem solving and I truly admired Nancy’s intense attention to detail, inquisitive nature, and superhero complex. I, in turn, developed into that annoying kid that never stops asking ‘why?’ about absolutely everything. When it came to choosing a career, I went full force into marketing because I thought it would fulfill my appetite for creativity and analytical thinking. However, after three years of experience as a Marketing Director, I found that my professional growth had hit a wall when it came to web development because technology, user experience, and marketing are inevitability intertwined as part of the customer journey. Along the way, I had picked up skills across each of these areas but always found myself going down a rabbit hole to no end when it came to web development and marketing analytics suites that required granular code-level implementation. My biggest takeaway was just how much more there is to learn about web development to efficiently take an idea and make it into a reality.
Why do I want to be a web developer?
It’s in my nature to search for the absolute best, and the most effective way to do everything I do and many roads in my marketing career have ended at needing to hire a developer. Working in fast-paced startups requires all team members to wear many hats and more often than not I’d find myself researching and reading lots of technical documentation to advance to the next frontier. I have always been an ideas person, and for that reason, I remember the first time I ever heard the word ‘entrepreneur’. Something about that word completely changed my outlook on life because to me entrepreneurs are the people that make life-changing ideas into a reality. But ideas are just ideas without execution and limited resources makes starting a successful business very challenging. Then along comes web development like a magical black box that turns ideas into real things that help people. I’ve always had a sincere desire to make a positive impact on the world, and I believe learning to be a great developer is the most effective way to do so.
Overcoming doubt
After much introspection, I was able to overcome my self-doubt to embrace the calculated risk of making this drastic career shift only after I had proven my capacity to do so successfully. For several weeks I worked on a self-prescribed path to learning web development and developed a process to hold myself accountable for obtaining this dream. After successfully meeting my goals I felt I was ready to take on more and I now feel confident in my progress with the structure that Flatiron School has provided. I’m currently working full time on the FlatironSchool’s Full Stack Web Development course and look forward to the day that I have the technical know-how to be a part of a web development team because it’s this creative problem solving that I crave.
