I've always had a creative itch. When I was young, I loved drawing, music, collecting things. This lead to pursuing a studio arts degree in college, but even with that, I never saw being creative as something I could do professionally. Studying art was always coupled with something else that was more of a 'real' job: medicine, law, psychology, etc. Out of college, I started law school, but was forced to drop out when my mom lost her job. I started waiting tables and founded my own small business on the side making neckties as a creative outlet. Before I knew it, my partner and I were working events all around the city, making new products, and were even featured in a couple of magazines. Suffice to say, I started to feel like being creative could really lead to a satisfying career.
However, finding out exactly how to do that was a little more difficult. Every designer job required further education or coding knowledge, neither of which I had at the time. Eventually, I stumbled into a creative role and worked one year as an art director for a non-profit publishing company. However, I needed something more stable and left to work in advertising sales as an account manager. Though creativity was around in the form of ad designs, it was largely uninspired and not what I was looking for in a career.
One day, however, my girlfriend's mom, who drove for Uber at the time, picked up a Turing student and was very impressed by what she had heard. My girlfriend said I should look into the program and something clicked. I researched several bootcamp style coding schools and ultimately ended up going to a Try Coding event at Turing which is when I was hooked. I was accepted in February and left my job five months later to attend in August.
My time at Turing thus far has been incredible and it's staggering how much I have learned. I have become increasingly obsessed with absorbing as much as I can and have been pleasantly surprised at how creative coding can be. Through the front end engineering program in particular I have an amazing outlet for my creative itch, something I haven't really felt since I started my small business almost four years ago. As I progress through the program, I spend more time trying to decide how I can best use my new skills to make the world a better place. These thoughts range anywhere from large issues such as helping endangered animals and fighting climate change, to things that hit closer to home, such as building affordable websites for local small businesses. As I learn more and continue to grow, I become increasingly excited at the possibilities and savor every minute of my Turing tenure.