I took a career aptitude test in high school. My top two results were botanist and screen writer. All I knew about botany was what Mr. Belding taught his class about pruning Bonsai trees. Screen writing just didn’t seem like a good fit.
So naturally, when I graduated from high school, I decided to pursue a career in marketing.
While studying marketing and communications in college, I was able to take several coding classes, mostly focused on HTML, CSS, and the lost-but-not-forgotten, Flash. I really enjoyed learning to code. After creating several websites and a few Flash games, I then had one daunting semester learning C++, and I gave up on any possible dream I had of becoming a web developer. “I could never be a coder,” I told myself. “It’s too hard and gets too in depth. It’s for math and science people.”
After graduating from college, I accepted a job as a marketing manager for a nonprofit (and have worked at several nonprofits thereafter). I was responsible for everything from graphic design to figuring out how to order 500 branded Frisbees in a day; but for the most part I created and deployed email blasts and frequently updated the website.
I spent so much time arguing with WYSIWYG editors, it wasn’t long before I became the resident tech expert when it came to our entire online presence.
Slowly, the most exciting part of my day became when I had to debug the pesky email blast templates, update the website, or just figure out “why isn’t this working?!” I really enjoyed this type of problem solving and seeing the immediate results of my trial and error.
It’s from this I decided to take the leap into learning to code. There is a certain type of ‘using your brain’ that I find very rewarding about coding. Taking something not working and being the one to fix it is very satisfying.
Turns out coding is not just for the “math and science” people. It’s for anyone who wants to work hard and find creative solutions.
Also, if all else fails, botanist is still a very viable option.