I graduated from college for the first time in 2019. I had had an “on-again-off-again” relationship with college since 2012 but was extremely grateful and proud to be graduating with a degree in Health Science. I had been working in health care for about 2 years at that point and felt good about where my career was, and where it would go with my new degree in hand. Soon after graduation I confidently started applying for jobs and waited for the offers to roll in. I figured I was a shoo-in. I had the experience, I had the good reviews on my performance at work, and now I had the final puzzle piece; I had the degree. It all seemed so perfect.
That is until, months went by and… nothing. Sure I had gotten a few interviews but they were either for jobs that didn’t require a degree (which I had applied for thinking they did) or the interviews went nowhere. I had done everything right, why wasn’t my hard work paying off? It was a question I couldn’t answer until much later. I eventually ended up taking a job that didn’t require a degree and barley paid more than my current job because I was desperate to get out of the toxic work situation I was in.
I started my new job and all was good. The work was easy for me since I had done a lot of it in my previous job, I liked my new boss, and I could finally wear any color clothes I wanted. (This was a big deal because for 2 1/2 years I could only wear red, black, and white. How drab!) But as I looked down the pipeline of my career I realized something… I didn’t see a future in this job. Like, at all. It didn’t challenge me at all, there wasn’t any real opportunity for growth, either in position or pay, and the job could easily be automated in a number of years. I felt like I was already seeing my career ending and I was only in my mid 20s.
So I wondered where all of this left me. I was once again asking myself, “Why isn’t my hard work paying off?” And then the answer to the question that had lingered in my came to me. It was my degree. Sure I had a degree, but what was my degree doing for me? It wasn’t in any specific area of the health care industry so, unfortunately, no one really cared. (No one except me of course. I will never not be proud of that degree, but I digress…) Here I was thinking I had done everything right, but I had nothing to show for it. So after I moped for a bit, I shifted my mindset. I needed to find a way to see to the end of that career pipeline. I knew that was going to include getting a new degree, but in what? In comes software engineering, and this program.
Now, I wish I could take credit for finding the program, but alas, I cannot. It was actually my husband who found it when he was in a similar “Oh no, what am I going to do with my life?” situation. But even after he had found and started this magical software engineering program that was made for students who already had degrees and wanted to make a career change, I wasn’t convinced it was right for me. I was never all that interested in tech related stuff (Besides being addicted to my phone… Yikes.) and had never ever entertained the thought of having a career in it. And then one day while my husband was talking excitedly about one of his coding projects, it dawned on me. This career was perfect for me! It would always present new challenges and problems to be solved, there was huge growth opportunity, and it wasn’t likely to be (fully) automated any time soon. And beyond all that, it would give me the opportunity to work in any type of industry I wanted. I could go back to health care if I so chose, or pursue something completely new. All I knew was that everybody has a website and on the other end of that website is a software engineer building it.
So here I am. 2 years later, 5 months away from my second degree, and 7 1/2 months into a software engineering internship. When I tell people that I made the career change from health care to software engineering, the general sentiment is something along the lines of, “Huh?”. But when I sit back and think about it, I actually think it all makes perfect sense. And while no step of this process has been easy or straightforward, I’m grateful for everything that led me here and where it has, and will take me.
Leave a Reply