Growing up I always wanted to help people, so naturally I was drawn to the healthcare field when I graduated high school. Starting college in Texas I was pursuing a degree in Speech Pathology hoping to start a career working with the deaf community. Shortly after I started my first semester, I got very ill. I lost most, and at times all, of my fine and gross motor skills. Constantly being in and out of the hospital with unknowing fear of the future, my focus at the time was to just stay alive. Miraculously, I started to get healthy and regain my strength. However, because of my health, I no longer wanted anything to do with the medical field. After physical therapy and moving to the University of Hawaii, I started to take classes for Computer Science. I realized that I had a love for computers and programming and wanted to pursue that as my degree and career. Continuing my education, I wanted to start looking at what industry I could see myself working in. I knew that I wanted to program but I had no idea that I could work in so many different industries. Data science, cybersecurity and graphic design were specialties I had no interest in. I started to work on different projects and was intrigued with full cycle software development. I loved the idea of designing, implementing, testing and deploying software. Being able to start and see a project finished and operating gave me a feeling of satisfaction that I cannot describe. Becoming a software engineer would allow me to participate in that full cycle software development that I crave. The fact that I could one day point at a program or project and say: “I helped make that” would be the moment I knew getting sick wasn’t all bad.
I know I want to be the best software engineer possible. Learning and soaking as much information as I can to become better would be my personal goal. Now, knowing that I want to be a software engineer, I needed to know what industry I wanted to work in. I didn’t realize that the medical field has a whole industry for software in medical devices. I hope to gain the skills and knowledge to allow me to work for a medical device company and work on projects like surgical robots or AR and VR. Five years ago, I would have never thought that I would be pursuing a degree in Hawaii to hopefully one day work in the medical device industry. However, today I can’t imagine learning or doing anything different.