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August 3, 2006

What are you made to do?

So, I have been thinking lately about what I am made to do and I really think I am made to be a software developer. Looking back at my life there have been certain points were it has been obvious that writing code is what I am made to do. For example, in the 6th grade there was a substitute teacher that decided to ditch the normal math lesson and teach the class about binary numbers. I was the only one in the class that got it and the teacher was so impressed he thought I was a boy. He was very embarrassed when I said my name was Jennifer.

Then in 8th grade, I took my first formal computer class. Now, it was not anything too exciting. The class was a computer literacy class and was taught on Apple 2e's. The class mostly consisted of writing Logo programs that created pretty designs. Toward the end of the class, we did try to write some BASIC programs and again, I was the only one in the class that "got it."

When it came time to go to college, I spent the first 2 years at a community college, which just felt like an extension of High School. I went into college as a Computer Science Engineer major. I took calculus, it was OK; chemistry, I had some issues but got through it; statistics, not bad; and physics, it killed me. I loved my one computer programming class, FORTRAN, and thought I found my nich. Unfortantlly, the physics class did me in. There were several reasons for down fall, one of them being that it started at 8:00 AM. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am NOT a morning person. By the time I left the community college, I was a dance major and decided to attend Mills College.

By the time I got to Mills, I had all of my General Education classes completed, so that left me with time to spend in other classes besides dance. I decided to try another computer class. This time it was Pascal that I learned and I fell in love all over again. So in between Dance classes, I took computer classes and had a blast. I didn't have to work in the computer classes, it just came easy and I loved hanging out in the computer lab working on my assignments. I think my favorite classes were Programming Languages and Assembly Langauge. By the time I had graduated from Mills, I was no longer a Dance Major but had a degree in Computer Science.

So, now I have my Computer Science degree from a Liberal Arts College, finding a programming job shouldn't be that hard, right? I am smart, I work hard, and I love programming. Boy, was I wrong. I did have a hard time finding a job. I had several interviews where the managers loved me wile the employees didn't think I had the right skills for the job. I finally found a job at HP were they were willing to take a chance on me and let me program. The job involved making enhancements to SAP. Now, I had no idea what SAP was but I did know that I would be able to program and that's all I cared about.

So what is it that you think you were made for? Look back at your life, your childhood, high school, college, and professional career, what clues are there that point to what you are meant to do with your life? Are you doing it?

Posted by crumrine at August 3, 2006 11:33 PM

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