It was April 2012, and I had just gotten out of the Marine Corps after 5 long years. I was free to finally do as I pleased and get started with my “real-life.” My plans were to work for a few months and then start taking summer classes at my local community college - and that’s just what I did. Since I was planning on majoring in BioChem, I took a Bio class and some Gen Eds.

Summer courses are condensed so there is a lot of information covered in a short time. My Biology class, for example, was four hours long, four days a week, and I have to admit that four hours of sitting in a chair listening to someone talk about photosynthesis was a big change of pace from what I was used to. I began thinking that maybe school wasn’t for me, but I stuck it out for 2 more semesters.

During this time, my roommate was always going on about the languages he was learning and how cool it was, but I had no idea what he was talking about. I understood that programs and web pages were built using “code,” but that was about the extent of it. He kept on trying to get me to start learning about it more, and after much pestering, I eventually gave in. He showed me how to make “Hello world” display using HTML, but it just felt lackluster.

I then dismissed coding as something I wasn’t interested in, and I kept with school for 3 more semesters until I got burnt out. Community college felt too much like high school. I was a 25-year-old veteran amongst 18-year-olds whom I couldn’t relate to, and I think the bigger problem was the classes I was taking just didn’t interest me. So, I left school and got a decent paying job working in a casino. While the pay was good, it was very unfulfilling work. I would go home and feel like I hadn’t really contributed to anything. I knew I needed something more.

After talking with my roommate about it (the same one who tried to spark my interest in coding a few years ago), he told me about coding boot camps. This was perfect! I could work at my own pace and never step foot into a classroom. After my experience at community college, I knew this would be a great fit for me. I began researching various boot camps and I had it narrowed it down to two: Thinkful and Bloc. I chose Bloc because it offered a software dev track, which interests me more than web development. So after all that, this is where I am, and I’m very happy to be on this path.