ACA Day 4: The 4th time’s the charm for 4rest!

What has your experience learning to code been like so far? What would you change about it?

Interestingly enough, my path to becoming a coder has not been a straightforward one. Rather, I have had to take a few detours and even navigate around a natural disaster before finally course correcting to the smooth path I am on now at Austin Coding Academy.

I officially began my journey to becoming a professional web developer a few months ago when I signed up for a local code Bootcamp in my hometown of New Orleans. It is a great program: challenging, fast-paced and I learned a lot about Javascript in a short amount of time. However, three weeks into the first phase of the Bootcamp, I was interrupted by a fairly common occurrence that happens in New Orleans sometimes: a major Hurricane!

Hurricane Ida hit South Louisiana on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (Which destroyed my house and all my stuff, including my first custom built PC, when I was 16 years old). Ironically, before I committed to becoming a coder, I actually worked as an insurance adjuster primarily dealing with Hurricane related claims. So, naturally, a major hurricane hitting my hometown presented a very lucrative work opportunity, not to mention disrupting my studies just when it was starting to get complicated. I decided to drop from that Bootcamp and go work Hurricane Claims.

It didn’t take me much more than a month to realize I would rather just take the money I had already made, volunteer to be in the first round of cuts when claim volume drops, go back to coding school, put my head down and grind it out.

Sure enough, An interesting thought occurred to me during that month or so. “Surely, there must be a coding Bootcamp in AUSTIN!” I did a quick Google search and, voila, Austin Coding Academy! You see, my commitment to coding has been largely motivated by the thought of possibly relocating to a place like Austin, even before I discovered Austin Coding Academy. To be fair, as a Hurricane Katrina refugee and an insurance adjuster, I have dealt with far more Hurricane related drama than even the average New Orleanian. When Hurricane Ida came thru and knocked power out for over a week, I had to make a series of quick decisions: I dropped out of code bootcamp, drove 4 hours to the nearest vacant hotel, and accepted the first insurance adjusting job I could find for the storm. Subsequently, I also made the decision that I would use my earnings from the hurricane to finally make the permanent relocation to Texas. Luckily, I also had the idea to seek out Austin Coding Academy.

I have been passionate about following the computer industry for almost a decade. I have also been visiting Austin for about that same amount of time and have become really excited about Austin in my more recent visits. In my opinion, the cat is clearly out of the bag now about Austin and I believe it is one of the premiere blossoming tech communities in the world. I consider it a great honor to have to privilege of being part of the Austin Tech Community. Though I encountered some major obstacles at the beginning of my coding journey which were highly stressful at times, all that matters to me now is that I have, seemingly miraculously, somehow ended up exactly where I want to be at Austin Coding Academy preparing to begin my professional career in the Austin Tech scene. So, I have to say, I would not change anything about my coding journey so far.