A Love of Language
“I would love to spend my career learning languages from anywhere in the world.”
When I was very young, I wanted so badly to be a marine biologist. I actually shared this passion with a friend at the time and some twenty-odd years later, she is a bonified shark doctor, studying the impacts of fishing on shark populations across the globe. Well, that was my plan too. Until I took a French class in seventh grade. I thought the French language was so beautiful and musical, I couldn’t wait to learn more. So over the years I took courses in German, Latin, French, Spanish, Japanese, and American Sign Language. When I finally went off to college, of course, I majored in French! I loved it; I loved learning about how languages worked, their history, and the impact that all languages had on each other.
I was a dreamer who loved linguistics, but I didn’t have much of an idea of how to turn my dreams into a career. One year out from graduation I thought to myself, what am I realistically going to do with a French language degree? I panicked and took a semester off of college, which turned into four years off (oops!). I worked as a server to pay my bills in the interim. I actually really loved serving. I got to hang out with fun coworkers, talk to tons of diverse and fascinating people, and the work was demanding and fast-paced. I moved out to Colorado for a job because I was helping to train the staff when new restaurant locations opened. One day I was talking with a table of guests and one of them mentioned that they were a speech language pathologist. My interest was piqued! Speech pathologists help clients with an array of speech related problems, from helping patients deal with a stutter, to re-teaching a stroke victim how to speak, or even voice and dialect coaching for actors!
I went to Metropolitan State University of Denver and got a degree in speech language and hearing science. I finally had a plan! I would get my masters in speech pathology and go on to help people with their fascinating and complex speech disorders… or so I thought. I moved back home to North Carolina to be closer to my family before going off to who-knows-where for my graduate degree. I got to see my family all time, including my brother-in-law, who works as a cybersecurity analyst for a major bank. He talked about how many languages his job required him to learn. Languages that help people talk to a computer, or rather, talk like a computer in order to program every function that we want to accomplish. What struck me most about computer programming was that every industry in every place across the globe relies on it. You can hardly do anything today without the use of a computer, especially now that we’re carrying one around in our hand all the time. I realized that working in programming would afford me boundless opportunities, demanding and rewarding work, and the gift of continually learning throughout my career.
So, I may not be like my childhood friend, who knew exactly what she wanted to be and then took the straightest path to her destination, but over the years I’ve had a wealth of fantastic, challenging experiences that have led me to where I am today. I decided to take the software engineering course at Flatiron School because I would love to spend my career learning languages, probably some that haven’t even been invented yet, from anywhere in the world. I have a set path now, but the beautiful thing about this path is that it goes in so many directions, I may never have to settle on just one, and I can continue this wild, winding journey for a long time. Wish me luck!
