Those people who are privileged enough to have space in their lives to make employment choices seem to fall into two camps: those who choose careers that they love and those who get jobs. The former have a driving passion for something and make that passion the foundation of their life’s work. The latter don’t operate in that way, and pursue jobs that appeal to them and then eventually move on to a different job, often appealing in a different way. Neither of these groups is necessarily more satisfied with their work than the other, they just approach the process in different ways.
For a long time, I’ve felt like a member of the latter group. I’ve loved so many things, but have never loved one thing to the point of wanting it to be a career. In college when it came time to choose a major, I chose an interdisciplinary one, because it felt more comfortable to narrow the focus of my studies than to narrow the methodologies I used to do the work. When I began working I started in marketing for a startup and then eventually moved on to the editing side of academic publishing: lots of writing, followed by lots of reading.
The past few years, as I geared up to reenter the workforce after taking time off to have children, I gave a lot of thought to what kind of career or job I would pursue. Endless amounts of thought, almost. And then, in the winter of this year, I stumbled across the introductions to JavaScript and Ruby at Flatiron. I’m not completely new to computer programming, but something about it just clicked when I started the Flatiron courses. I began to think about the aspects of my previous jobs that appealed to me—the creativity of marketing, the attention to detail of manuscript editing, and the problem solving required of both—and I realized that these qualities were all encapsulated by programming.
Although getting a job as a developer is my goal upon completing the program, what draws me to this work is less the job potential and more the actual experience of coding. I have found it to be one of the most absorbing and enjoyable challenges I’ve ever attempted, and I’m thrilled to have found a career, especially one which requires such tenacity.