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Geeks Girls Carrots Mentoring
One of my fave meetup groups has always been Geek Girls Carrots (not to be confused with Girl Geek Dinners, another awesome networking/professional development group with equally awesome food and locations). Last spring, Geek Girls Carrots led the second of the Code Carrots courses. Ladies with any level of programming experience come together, form groups, pick an “app” to develop, decide which stack to use, follow an “agile” schedule of week-long sprints, and work with a mentor to advise on all of the above. I was lucky enough to be one of those mentors to a group of four ladies working on a Django project related to reporting sexual harassment in the workplace.
The main challenge here was time. We all worked full-time, and met after work once or twice a week. There was rarely a week when all group members could meet in person at the same time. I set up a Slack account for us to use, and it really helped when one or two group members were remote. I was also a git/github resource – such a tricky technology to novice programmers to get used to. It’s hard to keep the cognitive load low enough for actual learning – trying to use git correctly, not “break everything”, get code to work, and write code well at the same time (as any developer knows, even when years into their career).
In fact, on the first day of the project, I was called on to do an impromptu intro class to using git and github to the whole group of about twenty women. Let me clarify – I had zero idea I was going to do this until the organizers said, “Jessica! You know github, right?”. It was really challenging, but really fun, and reminded me of what I enjoyed about teaching. By the end of the class, everyone was able to clone a repo and contribute to it. Success!
After eight weeks, all the groups presented their projects. All had a working prototype, and many had one hosted online, like Heroku. It was a great experience that I hope they repeat soon (nudge, nudge).
Volunteering at Ada Developers Academy
One of my goals during my career transition to tech was to be a mentor and role model for other women who wanted to transition to a better career. Luckily, I’ve been able to do that formally in two wonderful contexts (see my post on Geek Girls Carrots Code Carrots 2.0 mentoring), and informally in dozens more.
Currently, I have the privilege of being able to TA with Ada Developers Academy. If you’re not familiar with Ada, here is the info.
I spend five hours every other week helping new developers on their coding projects. Depending on the stage of the cohort, it could be working through nested loops in Rails or trying to figure out how to stub an API response in a new testing framework, or even trying to plan a long-term capstone project. I even recently taught a fellow volunteer how to write his first React.js app in our down time. Frequently, I’m a live rubber duck for students to work through problems out loud. Most importantly, I’m an empathetic ear who has definitely been through these same frustrations and come out a better developer in the end.
Why Did You Leave Teaching for Web Development?
This is a question I’ve gotten asked a lot in my quest to change careers. If you’ve ever worked in education, especially as a teacher, you no doubt already have some ideas about what my answer will be. If you haven’t, here’s the explanation:
First, I decided I needed to leave teaching. I was looking for something that involved less direct “customer contact”, was more financially viable for a single person in Seattle, and was related to tech (a growing field with endless things to learn about). I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go into instructional design, engineering, project management, or technical writing, so I took some time to explore.
After interviewing career advisors, multiple tech-related departments at UW, taking informal Web Design courses, and talking to my friends in various careers, I decided to take the intro CSE courses at UW (starting with Java) while continuing to teach. Not only did I pass said course, I found it wonderfully challenging and relevant. I took another, this time in web programming, and I loved it. I felt powerful. I felt like I actually accomplished something. I felt like I was learning and enjoying working with others. Programming is about language just as much as teaching ESL. Syntax, semantics, vocabulary, grammar. They are all related. I’m just happy I didn’t wait any longer than I did to make the switch.
Obligatory New Year’s Post
What I’m most excited for this year:
Another great year in a great house with a great dog and a host of great friends and family coming and going. Here’s to wassail!
Learning even more about coding and web development: currently taking a Udacity Mobile Web course online and a Python course through Girl Develop It (who are awesome) “irl”. I can never decide if using “irl” makes me sound like I’m stuck somewhere in ICQ circa 1998 or like I’m an awesome text-savvy social media user not a day over 25. Hmmmm…
Ramping up career from intern/learner/networker/experimenter to full-time-employee/learner/networker/experimenter. Hint, hint.
And in case you were wondering how long I would go with just “the girl the dog”, I am finally being well-distracted from my increasing nerdiness on weekends by, you guessed, it, “the boyfriend”(!!!). So that is one other, non-code-related item that turns out to make everything in this new year just that much brighter.
Happy New Year!
Even the Spice Girls Didn’t Have This Much "Girl Power"
If you are a woman in Seattle, you can’t not learn web development. It is prolific, ubiquitous, pervasive, easy, and inexpensive-to-free. In the past week, for a total of $100 plus bus fare, I have attended:
JS Seattle Meetup’s Free jQuery training held at picturesque Red Fin
Girl Develop It’s HTML5 and CSS3 eight hour course
Seattle Tech Meetup (at least the first hour before intensive day job had me sleep walking back to the bus)
RailsBridge Seattle weekend intensive Ruby on Rails workshop (we made an app!)
Awesome post-workshop happy hour sponsored by BlueBox (they deserve the plug because we got free margaritas)
And I have learned:
- Basic jQuery commands that I can now apply to JavaScript
- That my entire website made so proudly by hand now needs to be changed completely to make the most of the awesome-ness of HTML5 and CSS3 (will be done as soon as said intensive day job is finished this week!!!)
- Why Ruby on Rails is easy but also very different from the other languages I’ve used
- That I know enough about programming to self-select the “advanced” section for the Rails workshop and be successful there
- That I still have so much to learn!
But mostly, I have been so inspired by all the awesome people I have met at these events and classes. And I’m not just saying that because I’m trying to get a job writing sappy greeting cards. Meeting other people, especially women, who share my same goals and interests makes me feel so much less adrift in this crazy life and career change. New goal: one day to be a volunteer at these events as a “TA”.
Thank you, Seattle!
Rainy Day Web Hosting
Yesterday was dictated by the rain. Yes, an entirely rainy day in late June.
After a quick survey of painting supplies in the basement, I took Annie for an hour-long walk in Magnolia, during which time it was sprinkling yet warm. Lucky Annie didn’t even need her coat.
After lunch, I drove to Ballard (I know, a risky thing to do any time, any day) to stop at my favorite coffee shop from the old days when I lived by the locks. I found an awesome parking spot (for free!) less than a block from the coffee shop. I’m not going to tell you where it was, however, because the fewer people I have to compete with, the better my own parking chances. If you’re looking for parking in Ballard, I heard that there are quite a few convenient bus lines you might have better chances with.
At the coffee shop I decided to sign up for web hosting and thereby create my own actual website! Now jessicawicksnin.com is mine, all mine! I know there was a lot of demand for it because I got it for free AND it was immediately available. I’m looking forward to creating lots of subdomains like jessicawicksnin.annie.com! And of course, I have my own email: jessica@jessicawicksnin.com. Mwah ha ha! It may appear to be the height of egoism, and it is. Annie only gets her own website when she learns to type (which isn’t too far off, actually). If you visit the website now, it (hopefully) doesn’t show anything, but a day not too far off it will! It really will! Am I allowed one more Mwah ha ha here?
My next steps are to get the site to look less like total crap (halfway crappy would be ok) and start putting some of the stuff from my web development class online to make a “portfolio” (if this were HTML I would use tags on the “quote marks” because the truth is, I have no idea what the heck I’m doing with this whole portfolio thing, but frankly, “trying stuff” has got me this far, so why stop now?)
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