I built my first website at age 15. Granted, it was not a masterpiece, but I loved it because I felt a sense of accomplishment. It was awesome to watch an idea I thought of come to reality from self-teaching myself HTML from what I found online.

I spent hours each night and on weekends working on my site. I knew I loved to code when I could get lost in it for hours and not want to stop. Very few things kept my attention for that long. My mom encouraged me to go to college for computer science, but my other passion for fashion took over and I went to school for that. Fast forward to when I landed my first job out of school and it was for a fashion retailer, but I would be working on the website. Most of my job was in the creative marketing realm, but those HTML skills came in handy on several occasions when I had to jump in to code emails.

From there, my career continued to evolve and stayed in the online space. My latest job has me using my HTML and CSS skills every day as Web Producer. Never did I expect my work to come full circle. I’ve caught the coding bug again and want to move towards building my coding skills and to continue evolving my career.

Being the overly analytical perfectionist that I am, I researched every education option I could find: coding bootcamps, local college courses, masters programs, etc. But, I kept coming back to Tech Talent South. I knew I was supposed to pursue it further when it kept gnawing at me.

I am so happy with my decision to push myself to think differently at Tech Talent South in the part-time code immersion program. I have never done backend coding before and was very nervous about it. It has been challenging, yet rewarding once the lightbulb goes off and I get something. The teaching staff is great and supportive and they really want you to succeed. The TTS staff is amazing as well and I am happy to have chosen TTS to help me to grow my skills. Everyone is my class is really smart and friendly.  I’m only in week 4, but I have no doubt the remaining weeks will be even more exciting.