Why Am I Here?

Why am I here? Why drop everything I studied in college? Why become a software developer? These are all important questions, and the answers require looking back in time. I began my post-high school academic life as a kinesiology major, as is common for athletes who aren’t good enough to keep playing the games they love in college. That didn’t last long. I transferred to a new college, only to find that their kinesiology program had a two year backlog. I needed a new major, so I just picked one at random. My only requirements were that it was STEM, and that I could graduate sooner than was possible in kinesiology. I landed on geophysics, a subject about which I knew nothing, and started on the prerequisites. This was my first exposure to programming, as I was required to take Intro to Programming in C++ my first quarter. The instructor was below average, and the classmates antisocial, but I was hooked. It easily beat out calculus, physics, and geology as my favorite class that quarter. I looked into majoring in computer science, but found that it also had a multi-year backlog. The quarter ended, and it was time to leave coding behind, but the mindset I learned that first quarter stuck with me. Throughout the rest of my university education I gravitated towards the technological aspects of earth science, focusing on arcGIS, MATLAB, and lidar while my classmates hammered rocks and looked at the fragments under a microscope. Then school was over, and it was time to get a job. The oil industry, the primary employer for recent earth science grads, was down, so I found work doing seismic refraction surveys in the mountain west. This was basically seasonal work, with little to do in the winter, and was less than fulfilling. After a year and a half my contract wasn’t renewed, and it was time to look for something new. That was when, like something out of a bad movie, I heard an ad for Flatiron School on the radio while I was home visiting my dad. I did a little research and sent in an application.

Now I’m here, and for the first time in my life I know why. I’m here because I like to make things, and I like to do it my own way. I have the spirit of a crackpot garage inventor. Unfortunately, the age of lone inventors is long gone, the low-hanging invention fruit of the physical world having been thoroughly picked over. Programming is different. That’s what I was drawn to during my initial exposure. Everything is still in its infancy, with little set in stone. There is still room for individual innovation and contribution. I was born too late for the industrial revolution, but just in time for the digital revolution, and I fully intend to participate.