After schooling on and off since graduating high school, I have finally achieved some sort of degree. It’s not much, but it is an accomplishment.

Post High School

I did indeed apply for a few colleges during my senior year of high school and I did indeed get accepted to some. However, I decided to attend my local community college. I chose to do this because I had no idea what I wanted to do after high school. I had a passion for computers, but I didn’t think I wanted to make a career out of it. I didn’t want to ship off to an expensive university without a major in mind. I still feel that it is an injustice to expect kids out of high school to choose a career path. So I took some philosophy courses and some math courses until I was burnt out on school. I stopped attending and just worked my various restaurant jobs while focusing on growing up a bit.

New Employment

Eventually I landed a job at a food manufacturing facility as a quality assurance technician. For some reason, they saw a lot of potential in me and invested a lot in me. The gentleman that hired me insisted that I go back to school and he worked out a program with the company to sponsor me to do so. I enrolled in a food science bachelor’s degree program. I took it on 1 to 2 classes per session. I had to juggle the full time job, school, and kids. I wasn’t in a rush to get the degree, so I wanted to go slow and not over stress myself. My lack of passion for food science quickly became evident. I just stopped enrolling after a couple of years.

Coding

I taught myself HTML and CSS using w3schools.com while I was in high school. I enjoyed it, but never pursued anything with it. I didn’t attempt to touch JavaScript or any real programming languages.

While waiting tables, I had the great idea to learn Python as a way to get out of the restaurant. I took some free courses, but nothing stuck.

Right around the time I burnt out on food science, a friend of mine asked me to build a website for his band. I knew nothing about the web development space other than my outdated knowledge of HTML and CSS. But I took on the challenge. And I built a terrible website.

I was wholly unsatisfied with the result. But that drove me to do some research. I fell into a rabbit hole discovering the current state of web development. I thought I needed to learn some PHP and SQL. I quickly discovered that I was going to need to learn JavaScript. I dipped into a few courses here and there, but nothing really impressed me. Then I found The Odin Project. It consumed me immediately. It demanded either MacOS or Linux. I had always wanted an excuse to daily drive Linux. I took a bit of an unconventional approach to using Linux though. I bought a chromebook and used the Linux subsystem. I followed The Odin Project nearly all the way through. I didn’t finish it, because the early portions of the material gave me such a strong foundation that I was able to jump straight into the documentation of whatever technology I wanted to use.

So I made a decision. I was going to go start taking courses again. But I was going shift to some sort of computer science degree. The school I was taking courses with offered an associate degree program for web development. So that was it. I could finish up with some sort of a degree and I could take classes I actually enjoyed taking.

Academia

I was happy to be taking courses that actually aligned with my passion, but I quickly learned the current state of academia in regards to the world of web development. The courses and my peers were so far behind where The Odin Project had left me.

That didn’t deter me at all. I followed through. And I got my degree. An Associate’s Degree, but a degree none the less. Perhaps my experience with university is unique and there are far better programs available, but my confidence in university educated students is degraded a little bit.

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Anyway, I’m proud of myself. I won’t stop learning. I won’t jump out of my current career right away. Ideally, I’d like to leverage my knowledge in my current field to work on software that would be used in the food manufacturing industry. We’ll see though. Wish me luck.