- I am someone dedicated to growth - growth of myself, and those around me. I have a background in the visual arts, but I never wanted to be an artist, hanging work in galleries. From the beginning, I always saw myself as a helper, leader, or safety net. I taught visual arts for 7 years, and throughout those 7 years I helped others grow, and grew a lot myself as an artist, teacher, and human.
- Teaching brought me a lot of joy and helped me to define my purpose, but for many reasons it began to feel less sustainable, and more stagnant. Throughout my 7 years of teaching, I refined my lessons, improving them time and time again to better support all learners. I refined my approach to classroom management, developing the skills to quickly build, maintain and repair relationships based on honesty and trust. I especially refined my own artistic habits, vision and craftsmanship. I eventually began to feel as though I was no longer growing. I felt like I was solving the same problems, just for different students. I wanted to find a career that would satisfy my need for continuous growth, and for creative problem solving. I had heard about Turing from a friend in the program. I saw him in his moments of elation and success, and his moments of struggle. What stood out to me the most was that he was never just coasting. He was growing, each and every day. I was in love with that idea, but I didn’t know if I would actually enjoy the day by day life of a developer. I attended a Try Coding event a few months later. One particular example of the power of programming immediately made me think that programming was for me. There was an example of an interactive infographic that illustrated the enormous scale of gun violence in america. I could see the way that creativity was being used to help solve a very abstract problem, and I bought in, right then and there.
- During my time at Turing, I’ve started to develop an idea of what kind of developer I want to be. I know that I want to utilize my visual arts background and my need to create. My initial goal was to move in the direction of UX/UI design, but I had the realization that I wouldn’t be satisfied just designing things. I have a need to bring ideas and imagined things into reality, and so I’m aiming in a slightly different direction. I want to be able to design and build the ideas I have. My goal is to hone my programming skills so that I can design and efficiently build the experiences or tools that I want to bring in the world. I’m confident that by eye for design and artistic instinct wont go anywhere, but for now my focus is on honing my new skill set - programming.
This is great - nice work!