Somehow blogging has turned out to be one of the more difficult aspects of starting the Learn-Verified program. I get shy and I’m generally inclined to wait to show people what I’m working on until I feel good about it. So naturally I’ve been putting off starting this blog because it goes against all my usual habits. I’ve learned over the years that waiting to talk about what I’m doing until I feel good about it generally results in one of two things:

1.) I wait so long to tell people what I’m up to that it becomes weird and secret-y

2.) I don’t make it enough of a priority and then life gets in the way and eventually I just kind of fall off the horse.

So let’s not do either of those things. For the record: my name is Elyse, I am learning to code, I have made the commitment to The Flatiron School’s Learn-Verified program for Full-Stack Web Development, and I am currently waist-deep in the HTML/CSS lessons.

So why did I decide to become a developer?

The shortest answer is that I want to make things. With my hands (and the computer) that real people use in their real lives.

The longer answer is basically what I put in my application:

When I was three years old, I made my dad a Turbine Repair Kit. I laboriously drew, colored, and cut out tiny paper screwdrivers, wrenches, and hammers, and stored them in a pocket at the back of the little booklet so he could use them to repair the “turbines” I drew throughout (though a professional might take issue with the accuracy of my graphical representation). As far as I understood, that was what my dad did at his job as an engineer. Thinking about it now, it’s probably the earliest indication of what has been a lifelong struggle to reconcile two sometimes-opposing parts of myself: Artist Elyse and Engineer Elyse.

My artist self loves design and drawing and painting, and my engineer self likes repairing broken paper towel dispensers in public restrooms and building my own computer and serving as the de facto “tech person” at past jobs.

After college, I got started in the nonprofit sector, which led to an interest in entrepreneurship. Over the past two years, I helped start an organization in my adopted hometown Atlanta that supports entrepreneurs with new ideas to solve social challenges. It’s hugely important work but I find myself craving work that is more tangible, that satisfies my artist self like finishing a painting, but challenges my engineer self in the same way as working through an entrepreneur’s business model.

I love the creative possibilities that coding opens up and the real potential for impact on how people work and play. In every job I have worked I’ve seen the importance of the technology we rely on, from the spreadsheet we used to track membership at our startup to the major software implementation that tied our internal systems in knots at my previous job. I want to be part of building solutions for organizations that make work better, more intuitive, and even joyful.

I moved to Houston at the beginning of this year to be in the same city and state as my significant other. Between small pleasures like cooking meals together again and teaching myself how to paint, I took a lot of time thinking through what was next. A chance email about a scholarship opportunity from Switchup.com led me to The Flatiron School, and, after years of tinkering with HTML and CSS and dabbling on Codecademy, I realized this was it.

So that’s me.

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