First, a little about me. My name is Ariel and I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. I love playing in nature and shopping local as much as possible. I’m a lover of animals, food, traveling, and family.
I decided to become a software engineer for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons is my general curiosty about mechanics and how things work “under the hood.” Since I was a kid pulling apart technology (a.k.a. gaming systems, computers, cell phones etc…) and putting them back together again was a hobby of mine. As the youngest of four I was often passed down items on their last leg and wanted to keep them working or fix them. I know that’s quite a bit different than building code but in my curiosty about how things work I learned the patience behind trying to understand why something works the way it does and how to fix it when it’s broken as well as how to admit defeat when said broken item remained broken after hours of tinkering.
Previous to deciding to learn software engineering I was on the path of becoming an elementary school teacher. Unfortunately, due to unforseen circumstances (a global pandemic) I was unable to obtain my training with a teacher in a classroom environment. Everything was switched to online schooling and although I still have a passion for teaching I found myself frustrated with an online teaching system that wasn’t prepared to handle the entirety of public school attendess online. While studying to become a certified teacher I was also teaching myself code in my free time because I knew it was something I wanted to dabble in. I’m the kind of person who likes to have multiple projects going at a time and enjoyed understanding the fundemental of code so switching gears was almost a no brainer for me.
So, here I am with my teaching goals on pause. It was an easy decision to go full speed into Flatiron’s full time software engineering course and have really enjoyed what I have learned so far. I love the community that Flatiron has built and how they encourage you to be involved with your cohort as well as the coding community as a whole. I had no idea how vast the online tech community really was and as a people person I have been stoked to become a part of that community and look forward to becoming more involved as I take this journey into software engineering.