Where I'm From
I'm a proud native of Washington, DC. I love my city and love to complain about its continually disappointing sports teams.
Becoming a Developer
My academic background is in education and the humanities. I received my Master's in Secondary Education (Social Studies) in the summer of 2013, but the lack of career options and a lifelong interest in and aptitude for technology lead me to Dev Bootcamp. At the end of October (2014) I completed the 19-week intensive web development training. After the bootcamp I was a teaching assistant at another bootcamp (The Iron Yard), which was a perfect way to bridge my previous and future careers. I'm currently employed as a Software Engineer.
The Influence of Teaching
While at first glance teaching might not seem to relate to web development, it's increased several of my web development skills. Teaching has made me a better team member. As a teacher you can't put yourself first and still ensure that students are learning and growing. The principles of good unit and lesson planning, particularly backwards design, apply quite well to programming projects. Backwards design puts the desired outcome as the focus at the start of planning, with all steps of the unit or lesson working to meet that goal. This mirrors developing a project with the user experience or expectation in mind. Teaching rarely goes according to plan however, so the ability to respond to change (occasionally in just the few minutes between classes) will serve me well in an environment that utilizes good agile methods.
Hobbies
I was a fencer in my undergraduate years, but due to an injury and lack of time to devote to it I haven't fenced much lately. Luckily fencing is easy to pursue at any stage of life.
The reason why it's so hard to find images of myself to use is that I'm usually the one taking the pictures. Another hobby of mine is photography. I took the following photo on a trip to Nova Scotia in the summer of 2011 and it's one of my favorites.
I also love music. Singing it, listening to it, playing it--I like it all. Unfortunately I don't know how to play too many musical instruments (or at least how to play them well) aside from the piano.