When asked several years ago, “Where do you picture yourself in 5 years?”, I never had pursuing a career in coding on my radar. And yet, here I am. Life is strange and unpredictable.
My background is firmly grounded in music (specifically, classical music). I attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 2009-2010, where I studied music composition, and then transferred to the Eastman School of Music, where I graduated with my BM in Viola Performance in 2015. While in school, I realized the difficulty of making a career in music and began looking for other outlets to provide income, eventually deciding that trying to pursue a career in arts administration was likely to be my best option.
After working at the Tanglewood Music Center for 4 years, part-time for the Symphony Hall for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), and as a full-time employee at the New England Conservatory, I came to realize that the career path I had chosen was not as fulfilling as I had hoped.
It was especially during my (somewhat recent) employment at the New England Conservatory that I had started to consider changing careers entirely. After much consideration and contemplation (almost a year’s worth), I decided only a month ago to apply to The Flatiron School. Having dabbled in some of the curriculum on Codecademy, I knew that coding was something that I could enjoy and that it was the career change for which I had been searching.
My decision in choosing Flatiron was a strategical one; from what I could find online, they have a reputation for providing a positive learning environment and helping their graduates find employment. In addition to that, they have an online course option, which I knew was the only way that attending a coding bootcamp would be affordable for me with my current financial situation. My work on the curriculum so far has only reassured me that Flatiron was the right choice, as the lessons I have worked through so far have greatly increased my knowledge of code and done a careful job to ensure that I understand the how as well as the what.
What I am hoping to gain from The Flatiron School and from a career in coding, is the reclaiming of creativity and freedom to create in my work. As much fun as it was been to work for the BSO at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood, it is not often that I am able to be creative. As someone who loves music and who considers themselves an artist (or at least a creator), I want to be able to exercise that impulse. I know that I will never lose that desire, and, since I can no longer play my instrument due to physical restrictions, I am hoping that working in web development will supply me with a strong career and help fulfill my natural creativity.