This one, to be precise. Eight months ago, while working toward my second bachelor’s degree in Gender and Women’s Studies, I developed the urge to… develop! I wanted to learn more about the tech industry, as well as apply my background in math (my first bachelor’s degree) to real-world coding problems. Plus, as anyone who’s experienced enough winters in upstate New York knows, a 1,000-mile move down south seemed like a fantastic idea at the time.

Now, as I enter the fifth week of TTS Asheville’s full-time Code Immersion program, I can safely say I made a sound decision. It wasn’t easy packing up all my belongings and leaving behind family and friends, but TTS has given me an awesome community of supportive peers and mentors and a challenging, engaging coding curriculum that allows me to explore the areas of web development that most interest me. To this former math major’s delight, I’ve discovered back-end concepts and languages like Ruby are kind of like math, minus the pencil smudges! Plus, all the guest speakers, fieldtrips, and networking opportunities have also helped Asheville feel a lot more like home.

Most excitingly, my experience at TTS has helped me land a full-time IT job at a local tech management company, where I will have the chance to work on future development projects. This is something I never imagined I’d be doing, especially since I’m a bit of a modern-day Luddite (I don’t have Facebook, I’ve read 1984 one too many times, and I still use a flip phone). In a way, coming to Asheville has helped me conquer my fears of the unknown, and I’ve learned to embrace coding as a skill—just like reading or writing—that is both personally fulfilling and professionally marketable. Though I’m not sure what the future holds, I’m satisfied that TTS has given me a solid foundation, and I’m excited to see what comes next!