I gave up everything to follow my passion for software development.
In September 2018, I started college at UC Santa Barbara as a Biological Sciences major along the pre-med path. My ultimate goal was to go onto attend med school and become a doctor. During orientation, I remember the bio major counselors telling us that more than half of the people in the room (all pre-bio majors) would not end up graduating with a degree in biology in 4 years, and that most would end up switching majors or falling behind. Although most other students around me were shocked and scared when hearing this, I was completely unphased and honestly somewhat amused by the potential challenge ahead. I believed in myself and was confident in my ability to quickly learn. Fast forward 3 years later and there I was, beginning the fall quarter of my senior year. This quarter would end up being my last quarter at UCSB and somehow, I was going to graduate 2 quarters early. More impressively, I would end up graduating with a 3.85 GPA and High Honors (Magna Cum Laude), which meant that I was in the top 8.5% of students at graduation. By this time, however, my pre-med dreams were gone and I had a new passion: computer science.
My love for computer science was fairly spontaneous. Out of pure curiosity, recommendations from friends in the field, and my personal love for computers and technology, I one day decided to enroll in an online, introductory computer science course called CS50 at Harvard. I found myself slowly spending more and more time on CS50 than I did on my bio courses. Before I knew it, I realized that I was actually looking forward to my next CS50 lecture and homework right after completing the current one. In CS50, the problems I was solving and the projects I was creating were unlike anything I had ever done before in bio. I actually had to use critical thinking and problem solving to slowly break down bigger challenges into smaller, simpler ones. This was very different than the simple memorization of concepts required for biology. For the first time in my life, I actually wanted to spend my free time studying. It felt like I was solving fun puzzles rather than doing work. That's when I knew I loved coding. There was only one problem: it was the end of my 3rd year of undergrad and I was about to graduate with a bio degree. My solution to this problem was to simply graduate with a B.S. in biology as soon as possible since I was almost done, and take some more CS courses in my free time to see if I actually loved it.
From then on, I ended up self-studying multiple other computer science courses while simultaneously completing my last biology classes. After CS50, I took CS50W (Web Programming with Python and JavaScript). Then I took some MOOCs (massive open online course) such as Scrimba's JavaScript, React, and advanced React courses. Around the time I finished these courses, I had graduated with my B.S. in Biological Sciences. I finally decided to full commit to switching careers and go full time into self-studying computer science. This led to me to take two intense data structures and algorithms classes at UC Berkeley (CS61A/CS61B), followed by 2 Georgia Tech courses for data structures/algorithms and Java OOP. Eventually, I began building my portfolio by creating large, original projects that I could share with the world, such as YouPicks and AI Pictionary with Friends. Today, I am now working on even larger projects while also searching for new opportunities as a software engineer.