I had a "dream job" as a science illustrator. When people asked me about it, I was excited to tell them about the work I did. It combined my loves of art and science, and I enjoyed working with students and constantly learning new technologies. But I had a secret. My work as a part-time adjunct professor, and my freelance clients were not bringing in enough money to support myself. This was compounded by the fact that I was struggling to pay off the $60k in student load debt I had taken on to get a graduate degree. When I talked to other people in the field, many admitted that being an illustrator was only possible because they were in a dual income situation. Every day I felt like I was selling my students a lie. Here I was teaching them to be science illustrators, when I couldn't even support myself. I knew I needed to make a big change if I wanted to reach any of my long term goals, or even support myself in the short term.
I had been tinkering with my own website for years, and frustrated by the knowledge barrier preventing me from doing more interactive work. I started looking into coding bootcamps, and decided that one of those was probably the decision for me. I knew I would be good at computer science and abstract technical work because of my degree in physics. It wasn't until I finally got to Turing that I realized how much I missed that specific flavor of challenge.
Turing came onto my radar becuase I wanted to get back to Colorado, and the non-profit status of the school appealed to me. The more research I did into Turing and Jeff Casimir, the more convinced I was that it would be a good decision that would help me on my way to accomplishing my goals.
I would like to work with a team, on projects that interest me, and continue learning.
In the short term I am focusing my job search on remote positions, and jobs in Augusta. Georgia (where I will be moving), and then after 2 years, I want to move back to Colorado. I want to have a full time job, that pays me enough that I can sustain myself and start toward long term goals(mostly undefined, but I would like to have my loans paid off in 2 years, and have a good start on a down payment for a house).
In the long term, I want to make a significant contribution to the community somehow. I would love to get involved in a open source project, or work on a technology with a positive social impact. I also want to pave the way for other women in the field. When I was a science illustrator that meant getting girls interested in physics (to try to counteract all of the people telling them that it is "really hard" or that girls aren't good at math/science). But I could also see myself advocating for women in computer science.
From concepts taught in class or your personal learning, what technical concepts do you enjoy exploring most?
So far my favorite things have been building internal and external APIs, TDD, AJAX, and ActiveRecord/SQL queries.
I have not particularly enjoyed authentication/authorization, and I still find Git to be more trouble than is reasonable.
Anything with math and a right answer. I've been in the creative field for so long where you can finish a project and you have no control over whether or not the client or user "likes it". For the last few months, for the most part, I've been building things that either work, or they don't work. It's been a really nice change for me.
I also love combining design and back-end code. That seems like a very logical continuation of my experience and learning so far.
Thanks for the detailed responses. This is all good for me to know, and here's some initial thoughts if you find them valuable: