I initially began my journey into software development as an undergrad studying general engineering. In my general engineering coursework, we covered the basic STEM coursework that you would expect: Biology, Chemistry, Calculus, and more, however, at the university that I attended freshman year, an introductory course in coding was required as well.
I vividly remember starting out in the class, very nervous but excited, as I had never taken any computer class that was more in-depth than the basics of using Microsoft Office Suite – in elementary school or “Intro to Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator” – in high school. The classroom was in a basement with no windows and there were rows and rows of students, each sporting a personal computer – a quad-core processor which weighed as much if not more than a large textbook. I found myself nervous, but really curious as to what they expected us to learn.
I figured, general engineering would require us to use software, but mostly for modeling parts, and that we would be operating things through a GUI – Graphical User Interface, much like using any other software we had up until that point, so coding seemed unnecessary, but exciting nonetheless. It was exciting to think that we would be communicating with a computer in a separate language on a deeper level.
The program we were first exposed to was called Maple14: software used to analyze, explore, visualize, and solve mathematical problems. One of our first major labs involved us creating a physics simulation in which we formed a virtual box and a small red ball, and had the ball bounce within the box’s sides at various speeds and angles. I found this lab so incredibly challenging and frustrating!! I had never encountered class material that was so vastly outside of my scope of knowledge. It was so different from anything I had ever done before – which made me want to learn what was going on even more.
So I started attending a tutoring clinic based around coding, where I sought to better understand the material and work through it with grad students who acted as TA’s there. Unfortunately, during my time at the tutoring clinic, I experienced frequent inappropriate behavior from a professor, which created a hostile learning environment for me. That, combined with the massive financial stress that I was dealing with (as this university was private and I had very little aid at the time), I decided to transfer out of that school and to another in the same area.
Because of my experiences at my previous university, I decided to major in one of the life sciences, because I thought: the coursework is easier, I had already excelled at that type of coursework in high school, and the students and staff in were more diverse and welcoming. I wouldn’t have to deal with skeevy professors and be the only woman in a room full of men. Hey, maybe I even end up becoming a doctor! That would make my family proud and keep me safe.
I did end up graduating from that university with a degree in Neuroscience, but along the way I had discovered that I really didn’t want to go to medical school and I found neuroscience research to be incredibly boring. So I had just graduated, and felt depressed, like I was starting over from square one. After picking myself back up, I started pursuing my interests in my spare time – I found meetup.com and immediately found a group of Women coders in my area. So cool! So I started attending their meetups and taking classes with them. And I immediately felt that long-dormant interest in coding come back alive. And i finally felt like I could safely explore the field in a supportive and welcoming environment.
Many of the women in this program were attending or had attended coding bootcamps, and that’s where I discovered that that was an option! So I did my research, found FlatIron, and here I am today! I am incredibly grateful and happy that I was able to make this 360 degree transition back to coding, which I have found is ultimately the field in which I want to be. And I hope that one day I too can help another woman who feels not accepted, flourish in this field as I will.