code-like-a-girl-blog

[code-like-a-girl-blog]

Two Some Years In

6 years ago I left a career as a baker. I had been baking for 10 years and while I loved the job, I hated the company. I found that through my apprenticeship to my final role as a department manager that Safeway treats their employees horribly and focus mainly on the bottom line. It got so bad that at one point I worked almost 30 days straight, and had to do some work off the clock because they didn’t give me enough hours to do all of my work and provide my employees a living wage. I took it upon myself to make sure they would be able to pay their bills and have their insurance because I strongly believe that happy employees are good employees. This lead to panic attacks and a self reflection on my part. I was miserable. 

I was told once that people strive for two things in life; they either want money or they want happiness. I have always striven for happiness and because of this I stepped down from my position and went back to school. Going back to school was the best decision I have ever made (cliche I know). Highline College had a great graphic design program and I was good at it. I felt like I had my new calling and it felt amazing to finally get a degree after putting it off till I was 25. 

Then... I graduated and looked for a job. Job hunting wasn’t as easy as I expected due to my lack of experience. Yes, I fell into that dreaded trope. It was with this degree and no job that I knew I needed to freelance but I am epileptic so I also needed insurance. I applied at Starbucks because in Seattle they had just passed the new minimum wage law, Starbucks provided insurance, flexible hours and they had a new degree program. 

Oh yes, I applied to Starbucks to take advantage of all of the great programs, and the coffee, I fucking live coffee. I was hired on the 8th floor of the corporate building and had a blast. I met with a few design heads and was immediately told that I need more experience. I was also asked what do I want to focus in. I had not really thought of that and I was in an internal struggle. Do I focus on print or digital design. It was tearing me up ya’ll. Why couldn’t I do both!? 

I enrolled into ASU with this question always looming in the back of my mind. I also realized that I would find it difficult to get a job as a designer without a bachelors so I went into the Graphic Information Technology program. I was also hired on as a project specialist in the corporate building doing various design work, data entry and admin work. I liked to say, to my bosses chagrin, that I did all of the things nobody else had time to do. 

About a year into school and my new job I found an amazing mentor (we will call him Han because of his two Star Wars tattoos) and posed him my question. He had gone through design school and into development to find that he hated it. So he went back to design and his role was a UI designer. As I hemmed and hawed over my digital/ print problem I changed my major to a web development major because, honestly, I already knew the design stuff. I wanted to be able to design and build my sites if I was going to do this. Never mind that I was still deciding if I wanted to focus on print. As a side note, ASU does not offer a traditional GD course online so that is why I wasn’t getting a degree in that. 

my 4th semester into ASU I took my first JavaScript class and was so freaking excited! I went into the class thinking I kick ass at HTML and CSS and did pretty great back in the day with Visual Basic.I was like, I got this shit! I am going to kill it! GOD WAS I WRONG. I absolutely bombed my first two weeks of a seven week session. I quickly enlisted awesome people to mentor me in JavaScript and ended up getting a 93 in the class. That class is a blur and I am not sure if I actually remember anything from it.

 I told my Han about my failure and how I pulled through it, more importantly I told him I had decided to focus on development because I felt the print business was over saturated and I had been hearing that people either develop or design and I wanted to be a powerhouse that did both. Right then and there he told me I needed to apply for a job that opened up. I did and was hired as a junior developer.

That was almost exactly one year ago. In that year Han has decided to move on to a new job, I had a baby and as of today plan on going back to work in 2 weeks. It was two years ago that I started my journey with ASU and I won’t be done till sometime in 2019. So I sit here, long winded and pensive. Thankful for the rollercoaster that was 2017 and a little apprehensive of what 2018 brings. I look forward to going back to work but always have a little doubt that I will still be wanted. I start school up again in two weeks and am afraid I have forgotten everything and will not succeed in either my studies or my job. So I have goal. Study an hour a day, build some shit and be the kickass woman that I am. Because if they fire me I should at least know enough to get a knew job, right? >.^.