Finding My Path
I’ve finally decided what I want to be when I grow up (aside from a grown up, of course) and I feel pretty excited to finally have a path. Ever since I started on this new techie journey I’ve been so certain that it’s right for me but less clear about where I should go, what I should aim for. I knew pretty clearly what I could expect in my old path (nonprofit management/administration) but this new path walks me through a foreign land and the local customs are unfamiliar and somewhat unwelcoming. I keep asking people what I should do, what jobs I should look for, what knowledge I should obtain, whether I need to go back to school, but their answers are always, “Well, it really depends on what you want to ultimately do,” and that’s not the answer I’m looking for.
Last night I took the plunge and registered myself for a certificate program offered by my local big university. It’s “Web Development Technologies” or something like that and while I usually shy away from the whole idea of a flimsy, flakey little certificate (as opposed to a big, heavy, solid, something-to-stub-your-toe-on degree) I feel like the fact that it’s offered by my well-reputed university, in an area for which my university is particularly well-reputed, is a good sign. Plus, I need some help. Yesterday at work my boss sent an email suggesting a solution to a programming problem we’re facing. He asked for my feedback and I not only had absolutely nothing to offer, I didn’t even understand the functions of the code well enough to fully understand the problem. This certificate program will give me a good foundation in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL and PHP and, even more importantly, how they all fit together. Some of it will definitely be review (although the SQL will be mySQL instead of PostgreSQL (what I use now) so at least that’s something) but I figure that even if I already know a good number of HTML tags and a tiny drop of CSS and a big bunch of SQL and a cup and a half of PHP, this program will fill in the gaps and make the connections that keep me pulling up short at work these days. I’m excited and hopeful (although I can’t deny that part of my excitement is having an excuse to buy books).
When I was walking back to work after my lunch break I was thinking about a coworker’s response when I shared my new educational pursuit. I could tell she wanted to be supportive but that she thought it was unnecessary to do something like this when I should learn all of this in the course of my job (apparently she missed the fact that I’m not actually learning in the course of my job…or at least not much faster than at a glacial pace). I was mulling over the certificate program and whether I thought it would be a good addition to my resume and was picturing it on my resume except I couldn’t remember the title and could only remember something like “web developer” and then it sort of hit me that, DUH, this is what I want to do when I grow up! I want to be a web developer. I want to design databases and write PHP (and more) to build websites. I want to do the job I have now, except more so (and better). For some reason I’ve been thinking that I could either go the route of becoming a database administrator or I could go the route of becoming a programmer, and it made me sad that I couldn’t have both because I really love both. But duh, this *is* both.
Always before when I considered web-related work (yes, I’ve considered it, along with pretty much every other career out there), it was web design and making things pretty. I shied away from back-end development because it seemed so dry, so absolutely lacking in artistic merit. Of course, I see it differently now. Yes, still not much artistic merit I suppose, but oh so creative! And oh so well paid rewarding! I look forward to walking this path.