I can’t believe we’re already halfway through the quarter. It’s flying by! And as much as I truly cannot wait for this program to be over (I’m ready to have my free time back), a small part of me is going to miss it. This program has given me a bit of a purpose over the last two years. It’s remained constant throughout a lot of change. If there was ever a time where I felt overwhelmed by other things going on in my life, I could always tell myself, for better or for worse, to forget everything else and go do some homework. It’s forced me to sit down and learn things I probably would never have learned otherwise. It’s pushed me way out of my comfort zone. It’s humbled me while simultaneously given me confidence. It’s stressed me out while simultaneously given me peace, knowing I was on the right track to achieving my goals.

Through a lot of this program, I’ve had anxiety that I wasn’t good enough. I was worried that I’d never get a software job and therefore never live the life I wanted to live. I put a LOT of pressure on myself to get everything right. Looking back, I definitely didn’t need to put that much pressure on myself the whole time. It led to a whole lot of unnecessary fear and panic. But now, it’s kind of funny to reflect back on the various topics that at one time, seemed super scary.

March 2020 // Applying to OSU

• I heard someone say they “wrote an API”. I had just recently learned what an API was. I had to know how to WRITE one?! Oh no.
• Linked lists, because I saw a Glassdoor interview question about linked lists, and I thought they were this big scary elusive thing that would plague me for years.

July 2020 // First quarter

• C. Yes, the programming language, C. I wanted to learn it because there were jobs available in it at my current company. C scared the crap out of me, and I ended up giving up.
• Mergesort. Again, I saw someone mention this on Glassdoor, and panicked because I didn’t know what it was. Maybe I should have spent less time panicking on Glassdoor.
• The spread operator in JavaScript. I had no idea what it did, or why it looked so weird. Instead of looking it up, I psyched myself out and thought it’d be too complicated for me to understand, so I just tried to avoid and ignore it.

December 2020 // second quarter

• Acquiring the skills needed for an entry-level software job. I really wanted to have the skills required and be ready to interview by summer of 2021. I annoyed the crap out of my software engineer boyfriend by asking him almost every day if he thought I would be able to get a job the following summer. I would follow up my questions with justifications like, “I’m learning *insert topic here* at school right now!” in which I was mostly just trying to convince myself that I’d be ready. I’m pretty sure his answer was always that I was doing great and shouldn’t have any trouble finding a job. That would appease me for a day or two, and then I’d go right back to worrying that I wouldn’t be able to find a job.

February 2021 // third quarter

• Buzzwords. Kubernetes, AWS, Docker, RESTful APIs, Back-end, Front-end, Full-stack, React, Redux… I had finally found an internal opportunity at work, and was trying to get exposure to as many of these buzzwords as possible so that I could throw them on my resume and try to make myself sound super intelligent and skilled. (Although, just because someone on your team mentions Kubernetes once in a meeting, doesn’t mean you can list it as a skill on LinkedIn.)

MAY 2021 // FOURTH QUARTER

• Leetcode. Man, I really worked myself up over Leetcode. I wanted to spend the entire summer Leetcoding so I could feel like there was a 0% chance of messing up any interviews in the fall. So I did that. I really wanted to work at Microsoft. I pretty much joined this program because I wanted to work at Microsoft. I had deemed Microsoft the holy grail of companies. (Spoiler alert – I don’t work at Microsoft, and l’m still very happy). So I spent my entire summer freaking out over Microsoft Leetcode questions.

SEPTEMBER 2021 // SIXTH QUARTER, APPLYING FOR JOBS

• Picking the best job! In a surprising turn of events, my anxiety had driven me to overachieve and I received not just one job offer, but 4! One recruiter even said my interview performance was one of the strongest for SWE I candidates they’d ever seen. I then had to pick. This was a good problem to have! And though it felt scary to choose at the time, there really wasn’t a wrong choice.

After I got several job offers, I realized that I truly was good enough. And not just was I good enough because the job offers had validated me, but I was good enough this whole time! I realized how capable I was. And once I gained a little more confidence and trust in myself, software stopped seeming so scary.

For the record… I now know how to write APIs, and I actually find it fun. Linked lists only took about 30 minutes to learn. C wasn’t too hard to pick up. I’m a big fan of the spread operator in JavaScript. And if anyone asks me an interview question about Mergesort, they’re insane, and I probably don’t want to work there anyway.