I should start off by saying I’m a night-owl…

My mother would be so disappointed to see what time I uploaded this.

Hello again, my name is Kellie and I never go to sleep on time. This will probably be my usual upload hours for my blogs and my homework. It really isn’t my fault however. I spent a lot on my nights up painting, drawing, creating layouts, designing, and coding. I’m not one to think of myself as a typical hours, blue-collar worker. Thats probably how I got into coding in the first place. Staying up late one night and at a lost of what to do, I started talking to my computer (that actually would make a great memoir title).

What probably didn’t help with my sleepless nights was the TechIMPACT vestibule beginning. Honestly the first night I was too excited to get any sleep (which is really bad considering what time I have to be up for the train). For my first day I was happy to be apart of something that would push my career forward and allow me to grow at the same time. I was even excited to fill out the paperwork (which was not that bad to have to do). It was awesome to walk into a classroom and meet people who are interested in similar things as you.

I noticed that I was one of only four other females in the class. Ever since I’ve graduated from my Associates program, I noticed this trend. Back at City Tech, my graphic design classes where huge and diverse, having almost half of the class being women. My web design classes or web development classes would have less students and a lot less women. I’m not too sure yet what I can do to change this, but I would like to find something to break this pattern.

My biggest challenges that I can see so far is how I plan to learn Java and my travel from home to class. I’m a self-taught coder (along with the stuff I learned in school) and majority of what I understand, I showed myself. I always find that in the beginning of any coding class I plan my learning around a lesson. So I’ll watch how its being taught, take notes on the most important parts then go home and reteach myself with how I’m comfortable learning. Sometimes I create my own curriculum with my notes. And with the travel that I have, I’ll have more than enough time to do so. I spend about an hour and thirty minutes on the subway, taking two trains. I don’t mind the long travel time (I went to Kingsborough for a year, so I KNOW long travel time) but when I get home I’m pretty tired. All the more reason for me to get to bed on time (yeah, right…).