In 2014, I received an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps after serving a five-year contract. Later that year I went to work for an Engineering firm in Indianapolis, Indiana. After my initial interview I told the hiring manager that I wasn’t familiar with most of what the company did, but I was excited at the prospect of learning it. Fast forward a year and a half and you find me taking on the lead technical position and acting as the company representative on site. I ensured product and customer relations quality while traveling internationally. I made that leap by consuming The Engineering Fundamentals Handbook with a voracious appetite and by pestering all the most senior and knowledgeable specialists that I could find. Despite this success I still felt that I wasn’t fully challenging myself, so I began learning code utilizing online resources. Later, I enrolled in an online web development course through Ivy Tech, during which I fell madly in love with coding. I coded in airports and on long international flights when I should have been sleeping. I wanted to fully immerse myself in the experience of learning about this exciting new world. At the end of 2016, I enrolled in Eleven Fifty Academy, turned in a one month’s notice to my manager, and said my tearful goodbyes. I was finally going to pursue my passion! Within the first three weeks I had reinforced my knowledge of CSS and HTML, as well as learning new skills like JavaScript, jQuery, Node.js, Bootstrap, and Agile/Scrum. I also designed and built a website for my wife, made a web application for tracking shipments, and designed my own custom business card.
For me development has gone from a pastime to a passion, and from a learning experience to a lifestyle. In the words of Aristotle, “The greatest of pleasures is the pleasure of learning”.