What a year. 2020 has been one of the craziest years of my life. First the COVID-19 pandemic hits, forcing everyone in the world to adopt the face masks that are common place across Asia. Follow it up with the police violence and subsequent country wide protests for Black Lives Matter in response to the death of George Floyd. Lastly, for those of us living on the west coast, the entire damn thing is on fire. Social unrest, worldwide pandemic, and its so smokey you can’t see the sun. The only other year that would compare for me was living in Japan in 2011 during the massive earthquake that hit and subsequently being evacuated back to the US. That was bad, this is worse.
So, what do you do when you’re stuck at home all year? Go back to school. Virtually, that is. For the past three or so year I’ve been learning how to code. Web development, Python scripting, OOP in Java, C. A friend of mine back in 2017 told me about a course on Udemy called “The Web Developer Bootcamp” by Colt Steele. I grew up around computers and took a class in web development way back in middle school for the school website. I was growing tired of my day job and immediately took a look. The course said it was 90% off, a mere $10 for a course that was supposed to cost hundreds of dollars (marketing ploy). I signed up and found I loved it from the start. Colt is a very good teacher; patient, thorough, good at explaining things and breaking them down. It only takes a few lessons and you’re already creating things you can see and click on. I decided at that point that this is where my foundering career should go, and I’ve been working on some type of coding off and on since.
If you’ve tried to get into web development as a side gig or a career change in the last 10 years, you will quickly see that everyone all over the web will tell you how easy it, how fun it is, you DON’T need a degree, you can just BLAST through a bootcamp, or heck just teach yourself and inside of a year you’re making a software developer’s salary from any coffee shop you want while you make your own hours as your own boss. Guess what.
Its not that easy.
This probably isn’t news to anyone, but to anyone who somehow hasn’t been smacked in the face with the cruel reality yet, allow me to crush your dreams (not really). Its not that easy. Can you learn some HTML and CSS on your own? Sure easy. Can you learn to add functionality with Javascript. Yes, but you better put the hours in, there is a LOT here that you can’t just do in a couple weekends. Okay, well if you want to be marketable you better learn some frameworks and libraries. If you want to do web development you better get used to a flashy new library or framework or something coming out every week. Now you’ve gotta learn Angular or React, or if you really want to be niche Vue. Okay…now you’ve put in a significant amount of work to become a beginner front-end developer. Let’s apply for jobs! Oh wait, 5 years experience? No backend? Not a full stack developer? You aren’t a digital artist with a degree in graphic design? You have used databases, SQL, Cloud services, Docker, or anything? You haven’t actually deployed a website for a client? Well, tons of other people who are struggling to get the jobs out there have done many or all of those things, so how will YOU get the job? This is what they don’t tell you when you read ’10 tips to get your first web developer job’. Its. Hard. Work. Really hard. Even if you are dedicated to learning a ton, coding a ton, debugging a ton, and getting good at what you do, you still need a network, a social media presence, tons of rejections, technical interviews, and ultimately a lucky break. And yes, this all applies even if you went to a bootcamp. I’ve talked to many people in that boat, its no joke.
Anyway, the point of all this exposition isn’t just for me to vent my frustrations on the internet. Its really been my motivation for going back to school. Yes school is expensive, time consuming, and hard to do in your 30s. But rather than beat my head against a door that won’t open for me, I going back and this time its with a purpose. My first degree was a path of least resistance. I went to Oregon State and got a Bachelor’s of Arts in Liberal Studies (option in New Media Communications) with a minor in Japanese. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I just flailed around for two years undecided while taking bacc-core classes. I ultimately joined what friends were doing at the time and it was fun. But it did not get me a good career. Now, going back to school at 32, I know what I want. I want to do a job that I don’t hate, that I have a chance of being good at, and that will pay me decently.
I spent the summer researching what programs I could do. I knew I wanted to go for an online program. I live in Fresno California, which is basically the worst part of California to be in for Tech jobs and schools. The coast would be such a different story, but its unfortunately 2.5 hours minimum commute for me one-way, and I can’t make that happen right now. But luckily in this day and age, tons of schools have real degrees based entirely online. I dug into several articles, reddits, blogs, etc. to make my list of what to shoot for. I came up with:
- Oregon State University BS in Computer Science online post-bacc
- Florida State University BA in Computer Science online
- University of Illinois Springfield MS in Computer Science online
- Old Dominion University BS in Computer Science online
- Auburn BCS in Computer Science online
Of course there were more but these were the primary places I applied. Oregon State seemed like a good bet from the start. I got my first degree from them, which meant I knew what the school was like, and I also had an easy time getting into their post-bacc program. The program allowed me to take lots of great CS classes and didn’t make me take anything else. A simple math placement test was all I needed. Its a little expensive, but I feel like its an investment. Auburn was a mess for me. I applied the very last day before the deadline, and didn’t hear from them for weeks. Then I got a post card out of the blue saying I got in, but I had quite moved on by that point. I felt like they were disorganized and didn’t inspire much hope for their program from me. Old Dominion was a similar situation. Florida State is actually a really highly rated school but I had a ton of issues with it. I was going to have to take more classes with them to make up for things missing from my original degree. I really only qualified for the BA which I think is just going to look worse than a BS on my resume. Plus I already have a BA in something else. After lots of issues with submitting my application, I did finally get in, but ultimately decided I liked other programs better.
University of Illinois Springfield was the wildcard. I honestly had never heard of them before. Its a tiny school in the same family as the much more well known University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and University of Illinois Chicago. I actually applied to, got in, and started school at UIS for one week. Its a cheap program that offers a fully online degree. What’s more, you can enroll, take all the undergraduate courses, and transfer straight into their Master’s program without taking a GRE. Its only 32 credits more and bam, you’ve got an advanced degree. I thought this was a great option and signed up. Here is what I noticed.
- Its somewhat hard to get a hold of people. Its a small school and its during a pandemic and I’m sure everyone is doing the best they can. They just don’t have the resources of bigger schools.
- If you’re online, you’re on your own largely. Classes are through Canvas and some have discussion boards, but generally its hard to interact with classmates. If you get in, I suggest joining the Facebook page, and trying to contact other classmates about Slack or Piazza or something.
- I started two classes. One seemed to teach largely out of an interactive web book. It was decent, but there are no lectures or videos of any kind. The other was a textbook and poorly created powerpoints that largely re-hash the text. You’re basically teaching yourself.
For me I found much better everything at OSU. They just have more. More advisors, more resources, more career services, more seemingly everything. It was tough but I dropped UIS and committed 100% to OSU. I’m excited about my opportunities there and finally getting to where I want to be.
Sorry for the long first post. I just decided to start this blog before school starts as I have seen others on the web do. I plan to add some links to it in the future and of course new posts.