Why I Chose Web Development
Burn out for educators is real — why aren’t more people talking about it? I was a general classroom music teacher for six years and a private lessons instructor for 12 years. In my experience, the turnover rate for teachers is quite high, pay rate is low, support for classroom teachers is low, and resources are extremely limited. I LOVED teaching my students music — I was a certified Level II Orff-Schulwerk instructor. Orff is a way to teach music through movement rather than the traditional sit-at-a-desk-and-read-a-textbook type of teaching.
My first child was expected in September of 2015… I had the option to take a maternity leave and afford childcare or resign from my position. At that time, I could make the same amount of money working at Starbucks with a lot less stress and no take-home work. We also realized childcare would almost cost as much as I was bringing home. If we had a second child, we’d be screwed! Needless to say, I posted my resignation. I still continue to teach private lessons, and am a SAHM of two kiddos — 4.5yo and almost 2yo. I have loved every minute of it. I began to realize there would come a time when I needed to go back to work.
My top reasons for learning software engineering.
- I wanted a new career after teacher burnout.
- I am addicted to coding.
- I need a career that pays well.
In 2018 I was considering new career options when a friend (who works at Google) invited me to a trial class at Turing School. I had been building my own websites for teaching and blogging using WordPress… I didn’t know I could easily BUILD something myself! I learned how to use HTML, CSS and JavaScript simultaneously. I wanted to sign up right away, but a full-time immersive bootcamp was not a good fit for my family, so I taught myself how to code through FreeCodeCamp and CodeCademy. I discovered I loved it and was good at it. Have you ever found yourself playing a game until you could beat it? Or sat at a table until you finished solving a puzzle? Or you just can’t get enough of those crime podcasts (and despise the ones that are unsolved)? Or research new ideas for as long as it takes (like gardening, essential oils, veganism, getting a new dog, how to get your baby to sleep, etc.)? Well, that’s me. Guilty. 🙋 Coding projects are like puzzles I enjoy solving. Once I researched “job availability for programmers” and “programmer salaries” I was sold.
I researched many part-time bootcamps and found Flatiron School to be the best fit. Software Engineering was right up my alley — I could learn about full-stack engineering part-time from home gaining experience in Ruby and JavaScript. PLUS they have an ISA (Income Share Agreement), so I won’t owe anything until I get a job in my field earning a certain amount of money per month. There’s more to it than that, so feel free to read about it here.
I wanted to learn full-stack software engineering because I wanted to understand all of the parts as a whole. I am a big-picture kind of person. I need to see the big picture in order to understand the parts. Full-stack developers know how each part functions with the whole, which makes them a valuable member of a team. A front-end engineer needs to have an understanding of back-end engineering and vice versa… therefore, I wanted to study full-stack engineering.
My story is long and probably familiar for some of you. I’m almost three months into a 10 month program and have been loving it more each day. I have moments of thinking “WHAT IS GOING ON?!?” and moments of “Why am I so excited about Active Record??” If I don’t get my daily coding in, then I feel unsatisfied.
How about you? Are you considering a career change to software engineering? Let me know if this post helped you.