I got my degree in psychology at Western Washington University but a career in human resources and/or dog training wasn’t a good fit for me. I shifted my attention toward the only other subject I enjoyed, computer sciences and pursued my first certification via the Google IT Support Certificate. My interests in computers originates back when I was a kid and my parents allowed me to break apart our first PC at home. I was intrigued by how all the parts worked which quickly became an obsession.
When I was younger I learned a lot more than I realized from computer games. I played a game by Blizzard Entertainment called Warcraft 3, which had two learning aspects. Firstly there was the desire to host games for myself and my friends remotely, using my computer as the server, this required me to access the router configurations to open ports 6112 – 6119 to allow my friends to connect to my computer. Secondly and more predominantly was the sandbox world editor application which is where I first learned the formatting and operations of code. Within the world editor you could create events, triggers, and actions using if statements, for loops and while loops. This was my first introduction into coding, and it was fun because it was one big puzzle. There was a sense of pride in making something fun to play.
When I got to college I was constantly torn between which field of study I wanted to pursue. I loved researching how creatures think and perceive others because it was so interesting, but I also loved the problem solving of computer science. Looking back for the sake of a career I probably should have studied computer science. With that said there is one main under-lying theme, one constant, when my curiosity is sparked by something, I have to understand it. I’ve always preferred to learn independently because I find myself wanting to rush past the things I know and take my time with things that I don’t. Mentors have told me in the past that I am very systematic once I understand something, but sometimes can be a slow learner.
