I have to preface this by saying, I never wanted to be a Web Developer. I’ve been drawing my whole life and went to the Art Institute of Dallas for 3D modeling, with the focus of making video games. After school I was living my dream and was working for a startup company as a 3D artist creating a first-person shooter, but after two years, my dream became a nightmare. I was burned out by the long hours and the amount of stress that each day would bring didn’t seem worth it anymore. I ended up leaving, after a few odd jobs here and there I eventually fell into doing CAD for a Tower Engineering company. It was the start of my career as a drafter and I’ve been doing it ever since.

It wouldn’t be till years later that my love for art and design would come back; I can’t even remember what made me want to make websites other than my love for design. All I know is that it was another way for me to create and build; the urge finally became so strong I had to do something about it. I eventually enrolled at DeVry to get a Bachelor’s degree in Web Development, suffice to say a few year later into the program, it wasn’t living up to the hype. It was great for introductory classes, but I never felt like I was learning what a real Developer would know. I would read the requirements in job postings and was nowhere close to having these skills, I eventually stop signing for classes and looked into local Coding Bootcamps.

Believe it or not, I would later see an ad on Facebook that I wanted to click, it was Bloc. I really liked what I saw, the curriculum had all the programming languages that I saw on job postings. I would get weekly meetings with a mentor and build actual projects. Plus, I could do it from home unlike the local ones that only had specific times and days that I could take their courses. I looked into other online Bootcamps and none of them matched the value Bloc was providing. I took the chance and I’m glad I did, I wish I could’ve done this sooner.

Right off the bat, I could already see the difference between my previous schooling compared to Bloc’s. I was learning so much in the first few weeks, I finally felt like I was on the right track to becoming a skilled Web Developer. I was excited that I was learning terminal commands and using Github to track my projects on. Oh, and JavaScript! I never thought I learn JavaScript, it was always so foreign to me, but somehow, I been able to write code and understand it. I’m really happy that I decided to come to Bloc, I’m not even halfway through my program and as I move forward I can’t even imagine how challenging, but rewarding my next projects will be.