A year ago I took a career detour into software development and haven’t looked back. For most of my working life I have worked for law firms. During college this work had been a great way to not only pay for school, but also have a job that was intellectually stimulating. As each year passed I gained more and more knowledge of law until I finally reached the level of paralegal. The next obvious course of action for me was to take the LSAT and go to law school. And this is where my detour begins.

Upon completing the LSAT I was on my way home when I noticed another student on the phone completely distraught, explaining that he had blanked on a section of the test and that his life was pretty much over. At this point I began to think about the passed few years of my career and all that I had learned and accomplished. Why was I willing base the rest of my life on a three hour test instead of on the merit of years of work and knowledge? I had worked on learning to code prior to the LSAT, but even after scoring well on the exam I felt confident that the type of learning programming afforded fit perfectly into how I have been learning my entire life.

Once I began dedicating time to teaching myself programming, the familiar joy of learning new things everyday became addictive. I’ve grown a lot in the passed year as a software developer, but know that there is still a mountain of knowledge awaiting me. Though some days are inevitably frustrating, I’m steadily climbing higher up the mountain and becoming a more proficient programmer. The mountain is the reason I’m a software developer.

“Work Hard, Stay Humble”