Why I Became a Full-Stack Web Developer (Rookie Season)

Awe man, so where do I start “ So there I was in the Stan(Afghanistan)”. No, really I was there and that is where this story begins for me. Not so young me out with some of the baddest men to grace the United States (Special Forces). I was assigned to an SF unit as a dog handler in the US army.

What an experience I had there, perhaps I’ll talk about that in another post. Long story short, we were walking through some fields in Afghanistan, and I fell into this weird hole. Mind you I’m a dog handler, I thought for sure I had been blown up, or was about to be blown up. However there was nothing in the hole.

As I’m slightly stuck in this hole, I really injure my knee pretty bad apparently. I assumed it was just the normal wear and tear on my body so I finished the deployment, in mild pain, and even ran a half marathon. Its wasn't until after I ran in an Army track meet, when I was back stateside, that I realized that something was terribly wrong with my knee.

So I finally gave in and went to sick call, this was big cause up until then, I had never really gone to sick call. Its like the forbidden place for high speed soldiers, no place you’d find a soldier like me. So there I was face to face with this doctor and him telling me that my knee was is really bad shape. He found that I had a torn meniscus and no cartilage under my knee cap and a massive amount of bone spurs. He was astounded that I had gone this long in these conditions

This guy basically told me my army career was over, or at least thats what I heard. To me this was devastating. I had already been dealing with things since returning from Afghanistan and now this. He told me I should not run anymore unless I wanted to have a knee replacement.

So once receiving this information, and deciding to at least have the meniscus repaired. I decided that I would find myself a new passion. Up to this point I had done nothing in my life but use my body.

I played football at the University of Dubuque for four years, ran track, and even played a few basketball games on a collegiate level. Sports and my body being physically active had gotten me to where I was at this point in my life, what was I going to do now.

So not being able or being told that at the time was devastating. So I began my journey to find a new passion. Dealing with depression, and PTSD did not make this an easy task at ALL.

This is where the story gets interesting! SOOOO, I started out trying to do things that I thought would be cool. First I attempted to learn to read music and play the piano. I bought a keyboard and and dedicated 20 hours to trying to learn this skill(Because I read a book that said you can learn anything in 20 hours). I actually wasn't that bad at it. I only learned to play one song but it allowed me to prove to myself that learning something new probably isn’t nearly as hard as people make it out to be.

I got bored with the piano and decided I’d move on to the guitar and the results were the same.

I could do it, but neither was for me. Then I moved on to photography. I bought a Sony a6000 scoured youtube for instructions on how to use it and I haven’t looked back since.

I really enjoy photography but photography alone does not pay the bills. I needed a skill that WOULD PAY THE BILLS!! hahaha. This is when a light bulb went off in my head and I had an epiphany. I knew at that moment that I wanted to make apps! Not just any app, apps that would change the world( I realize this is very cliche lol)! So yea I attempted to teach myself SWIFT and PYTHON programming languages, mainly from YouTube.

I actually did quite well teaching myself these languages and was able to create a few minor things, nothing production level. But you know the simple tic tac toe apps, and calculators.

Somehow I convince myself that this too was not enough for me to go to someone and say I can build your app or make an actual web app from scratch.

So the time I had come for me to get out of the Army. I had taken the easy route and earned a job in my field of criminal justice as a Youth Care Worker. A job that was kind of a dream job, but as we know working for the county or state can sometimes be exhausting. Long hours, very little pay. I applied to this school in NYC called Code Immersive Academy, and got accepted!

Suddenly I had a life decision to make. Do I stay in my comfort zone and continue to work at this job that I like but didn’t have that upward projection or do I take this opportunity to learn something new and try to do something that would make me happy.

You guessed it! I packed my bags up and I went to New York! Straight up YOLO status(haha). I figured if i’m gonna try something out of my comfort zone the best time to do it would be when I was young and still able.

So boom here I am in NYC! Taking the city by storm with photography and learning full stack web development; and its been a blast.

I’ve been learning for about 5 months not and I love it! I’m currently learning the MERN stack which is MongoDB, Express, React, and Node. I had no idea Facebook had come up with something so beautiful. I absolutely love REACT!

So the reason I’m writing this blog today is because I plan on starting my first project this week.

Hmm, so I guess technically I’m not a full-stack developer just yet. Well at least until I finish this first project!

All in all, this journey thus far has been amazing and I have so much more to learn. I cant wait to actually be in the field and on the job hunt. If there’s anything I’d like for you to take from reading this; Is that I’ve taken a chance.

Its scary but I know it’ll be worth it! I’m not afraid to fail, thats life. In the event of failure, I know its just temporary and that gold is just 3 feet away. So I’m gonna keep diggin’ at this until I find my gold!

So wish me luck! good luck to you too!