Hello

I wanted to talk more about my journey on how I got into computer/computer science. I originally got a finance degree and actually really enjoyed math and analyzing numbers. I worked as a financial analyst and did find it enjoyable, but quickly found it somewhat repetitive and dull for most of the type of work I was doing. Mostly excel/tableau data analyzing type work that felt a bit meaningless and difficult to be excited about.

I then found out about VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and thought it was amazing in how it was capable to create macros or write specific tasks for it to do and it will do it automatically. I did the basic recording macros but that had its limitations. I then began watching videos on VBA and learning to write the scripts myself. That’s when I learned what a ‘variable’ is and created a small script to do a tedious and recurring task I do for my work. I spent weeks of my free time at work watching videos and making the script larger and larger until I was able to automate a lot of work done that I do in a month. I thought it was amazing and found out there were other things you can do with different languages like python, C, etc. and that’s when I felt that I wanted to learn more and pursue this career. I took community college courses just to make sure this was the correct path I wanted to take without fully committing. I continued to take courses and now I’m here in my last term.

One thing that was frightening throughout this whole journey was that I did not know where it was leading or if it was the right path for me. It was a huge commitment as any free time outside of work I was doing school work. It is a big sacrifice but I felt it was worth it and I didn’t want to be people who don’t like what they do but feel like they can’t switch careers because they’re too far in their current path. I know a good amount of friends that want to redo their career choice and convince themselves that it’s not worth it and they have to accept that that’s their current path and if they deviate it would be too inconvenient or commitment. Another thing that pushed me to change careers is that it only gets “harder” as you get older. I am still relatively young (mid-20s) and had I waited longer, I perhaps might’ve been too busy with other obligations with whatever I would be doing in my 30s. I try to tell people who don’t like what they’re doing right now for work to definitely find a way to change it as it doesn’t happen by itself. It requires being uncomfortable for a period of time or commitment and that scares a lot of people, including myself. Now that I’m 1 term away, I still don’t know if this is the right career path for me but I do know that I love my current role way more than my last job in finance and I’m still playing it by ear.