"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious" - Albert Einstein

It has been over a year since I officially started my coding journey. I thought I should give a little background on myself and why I even decided to attempt this career change.

I graduated in 2017 from Texas A&M with a B.S. in Microbiology. Funny story, I was actually attempting to do a Microbiology and Computer Science double major when I was a freshman, but I decided not to when my counselor told me I would have to graduate a semester late in order to complete all the requirements. For some reason, I felt that I would be a failure if I graduated late. Now, I regret that decision.

Life went on and I ended up going to a graduate program in Michigan, when that didn't work out, I moved back to Texas and started working in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry.

It was during the last two years that I finally admitted to myself that working in a lab was not a good fit for me. Don't get me wrong, I still love science and research. I think what I most enjoy about it is the troubleshooting part. Whenever the result is different than expected, it is exciting to investigate and ponder what the root cause might be and how to prevent it from happening again. Sometimes your theory is completely wrong, and although that would be discouraging for some, it is exciting because that means you have discovered something entirely new. I also had moments that I call "research crash courses", which was when I would delve into a completely new topic and learn as much about it in as little time as possible.

As you can tell, I love the process of learning new things. There is so much satisfaction that comes from not knowing how something works, to then actually learning enough about it that you can build something with it or teach it to someone else.

Reasons why working in a lab was not a good fit for me:

1. Seeing your results takes a lot of time

Even though I consider myself a patient person (I rarely, if ever, get angry). I am impatient when it comes to getting results. I have always been a very curious person and when I am tinkering with some problem and trying different solutions, I prefer it when I am able to see the results right away so that I can know what direction to take next. In research labs, you might be working on the same experiments for months and even years before you are finally able to sit down and evaluate the data. The data analysis part was always my favorite, but I would have to wait months in order to finally get to that part every time.

2. There is a lot of regulation in the biotech/biopharma industry

I think most people agree that monotony is not fun. Working in the biotech/biopharma industry comes with a lot of regulation (undoubtedly so). You are working to manufacture products that will be used on real people, and it is necessary that everything is documented appropriately. The way it was described to me is that if something goes wrong, you want to be able to backtrack all your steps. It is also important for experiments to be done the same way every time. That is why there are written procedures for everything and technicians must follow them to a tee every single time.... even when there might be a more efficient way of doing something. Because of these written procedures, it is difficult for change to take place. If you do decide you want to improve the way an experiment is done, there is a whole process that the document must go through in order for the change to go into effect. You have to sometimes even validate the change in the procedure or equipment. Because of this, progress can move very slowly in these types of environments.

3. Not a lot of creative freedom

Maybe this wouldn't be the case so much in university labs, but it is true for biotech labs. Since everything must be followed as per the procedure, you really are not allowed to "experiment" or try some new exciting technology whenever you feel like it. I think this is something that really dragged me down after a couple of years of working in biotech. There were times when I wanted to experiment with different ways of running an experiment, but couldn't because it would be going against the procedure. As I mentioned before, I love to tinker and find different ways to solve a problem, but the biotech field is probably not the best environment for someone to do this.

What I love about programming so far:

1. Instant gratification

Whenever you build your website or app, you can tweak it and see the result of your changes in real-time. You don't have to wait months or years to see the result of what you created.

2. Troubleshooting

If there is one thing I have learned about coding, is that there will always be bugs. Even the most experienced programmers will not write bug-free code the first time around. I think the goal of programming is not to avoid bugs, but to write your code in a way that will be easier to find and fix the bugs. So far into my coding journey, these are the moment I enjoy the most. The process of finding out where your code went wrong and finally fixing it... there really is no other feeling more satisfactory that this one.

3. Never-ending learning process

Technology is always moving at an ever-faster pace. Going into the tech industry means that there will always be new languages and technologies to learn and this excites me! I will always have to be learning something new as time goes on.

4. The freedom and endless possibilities

I didn't really grasp just how much freedom you have with programming until after I started working with APIs. There is really no limit to what you are capable of building. You can come up with a great idea for an app, invest time into it, and it will become a reality. Don't like how Google Calendars sets up your meetings? Use its API to tweak it and make it your own!

It was because of all these reasons (as well as the better opportunities for remote work in tech) that I decided to fully commit to a career change. As of January of 2022, I started a coding BootCamp and so far I have loved the process. As I move through the curriculum, the more I am convinced that I have made the right choice and the more I realize how much I enjoy coding.

If you made it this far, thank you. One of the other reasons I am starting this blog is not only to document my journey from lab tech to programmer but to also work on my writing skills. I have always been better at expressing myself through writing and I have wanted to start a blog ever since I was in high school. As the quote at the beginning of this post says, I am a passionately curious person and I plan to use this blog to share some of my thoughts. Who knows, maybe someone will relate to them or find them interesting.

Until next time!