Why did you choose to study software engineering?
When I was around ten years old, I designed my first website using HTML. I was using excel functions in middle school to help solve simple problems, and later I worked on Wordpress to maintain a company website.
I am a history teacher now, and a great deal of my time is spent lesson-planning. When I plan, I design educational programs for kids. The programs that I design are user-friendly, repeatable, and adapt easily to different content. While these programs are not “code”, the kind of thinking that I do regularly is programmatic. Minor errors in my instructions could lead to a room full of screaming children in the same way that a misplaced comma could result in hours of debugging. I enjoy thinking of ways to optimize my lessons to find the most effective way of delivering high-quality education with the fewest instructions.
I often write in HTML to create visually pleasing user-interfaces for my job and I built my first computer last year. Last summer I took a few Udemy courses and I really enjoy writing JavaScript. Soon, I would like to create web applications for educators and I have begun building some already. I attempted to teach myself Ruby on Rails, but I ran into a myriad of issues that I have not been able to solve on my own. Studying software engineering in a more structured environment feels like the logical next step. I need a hand getting to the next level.
Ultimately, I want a career where I can build web applications for educators. There are a variety of tasks that have been automated and improved by technology, but I continue to find gaps that need filling. I want to build web applications for educators that allow them to spend more time teaching and less time dealing with obstacles. I also want to grow. I have taught the same grade for six years, and I am at the point where I am not learning as much as I did when I began teaching. I get excited when I learn new things, and I thrive when I pursue new skills. Software engineering is a skill-set that seems limitless and I am ready to pursue this new discipline.
Studying software engineering is a time-commitment and a risky endeavor. The job market is volatile and our world is equally as unpredictable. I do not know if my decision to learn this new skill will pay off, but I do know that improving myself will only help, no matter what the future holds.
