I like computers. Computers like me. I've been passively using them my whole life. Reflecting back, understanding a file system, documents and printing came naturally to me. I didn't think about what I was doing, I just did it. A love of video games and math certainly helped.
Math is a great subject and I could spend the rest of my life learning more. It benefits me everyday in subtle ways, but I never looked into how to blend it into my work life. When life became about working more than learning, I kept learning. I read up on neurology, tutored, revisited math books, and learned programming. With some luck and ambition, I ended up making real good use of my affinity towards math. I found programming.
Technology is moving so fast. There seems to be limitless opportunity to learn through my own efforts, learn from others, and share knowledge with others. That is a good place to be if you value education and have left the world of academia.
My path from math to technology had a little hiccup, but I got there in the end. I have always been a logical thinker and loved mathematics since I was seven years old. I got my degree in math because of my affinity towards the subject. I didn't talk to school counselors any more than I had to and didn't attend any career fairs. After college, I went to cosmetology school and became full-time at my family's business.
Being a cosmetologist allowed me to meet people from various backgrounds and careers. I became a blabber mouth every time I met someone who liked math, physics, or music. It turns out that I met a handful of people who shared the same passions as me. One man, whom I am currently tracking down to see if he wants attribution, had such a fun time yapping with me that he ended up teaching me about one of his passions. He was super excited about Mac OS X and the LAMP stack.
He liked the LAMP stack because it was open source. He talked about Linux, GNU and Unix. He liked Mac OS X because it is built on top of Unix. It was very inspiring, but didn't make complete sense at the time. I was fascinated by the fact that you could do so much on a Mac without using the mouse.
At first, I enjoyed getting to know terminal and bash, but it didn't spark any big ideas for me. As I delved into the programming world, sparks started flying. My responsibilities were growing at the hair salon and I saw ways to automate a large portion of our paperwork. It was thrilling to create software and see it in use immediately, which will be the topic of a future post.
It is very satisfying to create software after passively using it for so long. The more I create, the more I appreciate what is already out there and how much more I have to learn.
