Hello, World! And welcome to my blog, I thought I’d start by introducing myself. My name is Megan and I live in Portland, Oregon. Back in 2015 I got my bachelors in psychology and speech and hearing sciences from ASU. The plan was to get a couple years of experience working in the mental health field, go back to school to get my masters in speech therapy, and become a speech therapist. So I got a job working with kids as a behavior interventionist and I did that for a little over 4 years. I learned a lot in that time, including that working as a direct care provider was too emotionally draining for me! My job was rewarding but when I got home I had no energy for anything else. I decided that I had to think of a new plan.
So I started to do some exploring online. I knew that I wouldn’t mind learning new skills but didn’t want to undergo the hefty expense of graduate school to do it. I found a lot of online career advice articles covering that very topic and one of the careers I kept seeing mention of was software development. I learned that a lot of people in the tech industry didn’t have tech degrees. Some people were self-taught and others were learning from coding bootcamps. That seemed like a viable option.
My dad has been a software engineer for over 30 years so we started to talk about what a typical day in his role is like and the type of work he does and how he does it. I enjoyed hearing about the diversity of problems encountered and the process of designing solutions. Meanwhile I also started experimenting with free online tutorials and apps designed to teach coding languages. I was learning about HTML and Javascript and Python and I was having a good time doing it. Figuring out how to solve problems in the code was a fun challenge. Like solving a puzzle. I continued self-learning about coding for about a year and at that point I was ready to take the next step into the world of software engineering. I decided to attend a coding bootcamp so that I could build a portfolio while also gaining a well-rounded understanding of open source software.
Today I finished the first unit of labs and lessons and it feels great! I’m so excited about this new journey. It will be challenging but Flatiron has a very supportive community and I’m feeling optimistic, which is a nice feeling to have during these strange times. My city is on a stay home order and a lot of people have been laid off. I’m looking forward to the security of a career in tech more than ever.