Satisfying the Itch
I was an 11-year old girl in the 2000s, fascinated by the Internet. “Being on the computer” was a hobby — I found myself clicking endlessly between different pages, admiring all the layouts and their colours and styles. I somehow discovered the “right-click” and “View Source” option, and developed a curiosity into the coding language that I was looking at and how everything was connected and outputted.
The very first website where I was exposed to Web Development was Neopets, a virtual pet website. Neopets allowed users to customize their shops and pages through coding. I remember copying and pasting free code into the site builder — the page background, font, scrollbar, and even music would change colour and style. At the time, it felt magical to see these changes come to life on the screen!
Soon after, I self-taught basic HTML/CSS, and dabbled lightly into Javascript. I also loved looking at other people’s codes as a way to study. Years after my first encounter, I moved on to building my own personal webpages through Freewebs, then Blogspot, and then Tumblr. I developed friendships with strangers on the internet, who taught me how to host my own pages and work with my own sub-domain. Web development was a hobby that brought me so much satisfaction and excitement, and the constant learning was fulfilling. It went on strong for about three years, and I had my twin sister as a coding companion alongside the journey to enjoy and learn with.
High school rolled around and I became busy studying for my courses and no longer had time to code “for fun”. I stuck with business as a career choice because it seemed “safer” and was the path I saw a lot of my relatives go into and find employment in. I never stopped to think that Web Development could be something I could pursue. I have a memory of myself in Grade 11 Careers class — when we were asked to write down what career path we wanted to pursue, I wanted to write “Web Development”, but I hesitated before deciding to write “Business”. I ended up graduating university with a Human Resources major, and worked as an HR professional for several years.
Although I loved my HR job, I always had a nagging feeling at the back of mind, telling me that I needed to try something new. I felt like there was something missing in my life that was sparking joy for me. Earlier this year, I went on Reddit and searched up results on “low motivation” and “feeling lost”. From one of the many threads I came across, I read one answer that prompted me to ask a question to myself: When was the last time you woke up genuinely excited to learn and work on something?
The first thing that popped in my head was web development!
It made sense. Whenever I heard anyone talk about web design or development, something inside me would light up. When I was in HR, I would sneak a peek at the developer option whenever I had to update a page on our intranet site. I often found myself reminiscing the old days when I would work for hours on webpages and loved the entire process and result.
Almost a decade later from that careers class, I finally took the leap to pursue web development as a career. It took a lot of inner work to try to reframe my fear into excitement. I received so much support and encouragement from colleagues, friends, and family to pursue this new dream. The COVID-19 pandemic also made me realize that life is short and now is the best time to go for what you want to do. I decided to enroll in Juno College after loving every second of their free Coding 101 workshop and not wanting it to end.
It is now June 2021 and I am just completing Week 2 of Juno College’s Web Development Bootcamp. Before getting here, I enrolled in Juno College’s accelerated Web Development and Javascript courses in order to prepare myself for the bootcamp. So far, I have learned so many new concepts, revisited old ones, but also had to “unlearn” certain code that is now deprecated from when I was that curious, 11-year old girl.
It’s been a roller coaster of emotions, but I am so happy that I took the risk to pursue something that I had been so passionate about. Everyone, from the students, instructors, and mentors at Juno College has been a fun and encouraging group of people to learn with. I also feel motivated to learn and develop my skills, and I am looking forward to continuing my bootcamp journey with Juno. I am glad I listened to my intuition and satisfied the itch to code.
