“Why did you decide to study Software Engineering?”
When I was in college, I studied audio engineering. However, in every one of my audio classes, I had a natural interest in the software and technical tools we were using to the same extent I was interested in the audio we were studying. I wanted to know how the Pro Tools software manipulated audio, how the iZotope plugins worked in creating virtual instruments, and that interest led me to taking a plethora of computer science classes during college. These classes taught me basic Java and object-oriented programming, and started me on the path to really having a passion for coding. As someone who has always been into audio engineering and musicianship, I’m a natural creator, and code allows you to build creations from the bare bones up, building expressions of creativity.
After college, I became an audio engineer at the Grand Ole Opry, the first female ever hired in their audio engineering department as a monitor engineer. At this job, I worked from load in to load out, sometimes 16 hour shifts to completely produce the show from the ground up. Though this was my passion, and I will never feel negatively about working long hours doing something I love, this didn’t leave much time for my coding hobby, which was eventually pushed aside. As I began to really get burnt out of working in audio, the pandemic rolled around, shutting down live music for the forseeable future. Though at first this was devastating, I had dedicated my life to live music and something unforseen had completely halted the industry, in the next couple of weeks I was able to really analyze my life, and if I liked where I was at. This led to a change in path.
The short answer is I wasn’t actually that happy, and having time to reflect allowed me to realize that. I loved the music industry, and was overwhelmingly proud of what I had accomplished, but the audio engineer life was grueling, and didn’t actually allow for me to explore any other hobbies I had. In the first couple weeks of being furloughed, I bought the book “The Self Taught Programmer” and began to explore. At first, I was just coding for fun, making little games in the Unity engine to entertain myself. However, the more time I spent coding, the more I thought, *how cool would it be if this was my career? *
I began researching careers that had to do with coding, learning about the distinction between software engineers, data scientists, etc. Software engineering was something I kept coming back to, and I immediately began to research programs that could train me to be successful in this field. Not only did a career in this field sound enjoyable, a career where I can use my passion for coding an creationg, but it also sounded like an opportunity for me to have more to my life than just working all the time. Careers in coding allow for a certain amount of freedom for those in those career paths, and that is something I’ve been lacking the past few years.
I’m proud of my decision to study at Flatiron, and to pursue coding for the long term. It’s so incredibly uplifting that in a few short months, I have gone on a journey to having an industry fail on me, to receiving hope that in just ten months, I’ll be in a completely new industry, that I love just as dearly. The future looks bright, and I’m excited to be studying software engineering!