I just want to start by saying thank you to my instructors Corey, Peter, Samantha, Mashu, Tim, and Gigi who trained us to be fearless and confident developers. To the volunteers who took time out to help our cohort succeed in mock interviews and code reviews. Also the team at Pursuit working hard to make sure that we are taken care of. I am extremely grateful to all of you and to have experienced this program and all of the connections and friendships that it has helped me build.
My journey into tech is one that I know I will cherish forever. I am a first-generation Vietnamese-American and the oldest of three in my family. I grew up expecting life to be difficult. I was taught to not wallow during times of struggle but to stand up strong and fight against it.
I started working at 11 years old so I am pretty familiar with the workforce and how often it shifts. I have probably worked in every single industry, except the tech industry. That's where I really feel like my story begins.
I want to take you back to 2019. It was a brutal time for me and my family. I was pregnant with my second child, homeless, and worked as a security guard at Target. Fighting against this struggle, my husband and I made it our mission to get out of the homeless shelter before Christmas of that year because we wanted our kids to celebrate the holidays in our own home. We succeeded in our mission December 17, 2019, just 8 months later. Things were starting to look up.
Fast-forward to September 2020. Poonam, my best friend, called me to catch up. We had both graduated from NPower in 2020, which is a program that got us introduced to technology. We were talking about what we had been up to and our next steps after completing NPower. Poonam mentioned that she had applied to Pursuit and told me that I should too…more like demanded that I do.
Fast-forward to September 2020. Poonam, my best friend, called me to catch up. We had both graduated from NPower in 2020, which is a program that got us introduced to technology. We were talking about what we had been up to and our next steps after completing NPower. Poonam mentioned that she had applied to Pursuit and told me that I should too…more like demanded that I do.
I have to admit when I saw the application for the program I was scared and going through the application process made me even more nervous and I became so doubtful of myself. Then the moment that changed my life came. I got the acceptance email from Pursuit, called up Poonam, and screamed over the phone.
For the next year, I was working full time during the day and as a software engineer in training at night all while being pregnant again. It was challenging. There was a huge learning curve here for me. But it wasn’t just about learning to code, it was knowing my limits and asking for help. These are two very important things that I’ve struggled with the most in life. But everything that I have accomplished today is not just my doing alone but was only possible with the support of my family and the incredible friends that I’ve made at Pursuit.
I was not alone in my journey. There were so many other Fellows here who worked during the day and in class at night and on weekends. We were hungry for success and thrived for excellence for each other. The support that I received pushed me to become a better learner, picking every skill that I can and adapting it to my projects. The support that I received helped me become a confident person in tech and helped me face my imposter syndrome head-on. You all have taught me that it’s okay to ask for help and that it's okay to say that I’m not okay.
“I was not alone in my journey. There were so many other Fellows here who worked during the day and in class at night and on weekends. We were hungry for success and thrived for excellence for each other. The support that I received pushed me to become a better learner, picking every skill that I can and adapting it to my projects.”
Receiving such a great opportunity at Cedar has given my family room to breathe. I’m no longer worried that my family will end up homeless again, but the fear remains and it helps drive me to work harder. I had to train myself to be an aggressive accountant for the family and extremely happy that we have started on a new goal, which is saving to purchase our first home. This is literally a dream come true.
One of the things that excites me the most is knowing that I have an amazing team at Cedar that supports me and believes in me. I get to be a student every day, learning new coding languages and frameworks, going over simple code and commands, and being able to contribute to helping others. Thus why I will cherish this journey because I found people who believe in me and it helped me believe in myself.
