My story
I'm Carina, and I never thought I'd be a software developer.
Flashback to the early 2000s: The World Wide Web was exciting and new. Geocities and Angelfire were flourishing. Strangers in chat rooms would ask you "a/s/l?" and no one used their real names or faces. As a nerdy teenager I began making webpages as a form of self-expression, sharing my writing, art, and passion for various boy bands. I dived into the world of free HTML and CSS tutorials, committing many crimes against W3C standards.
Towards the end of that decade, I entered the PhD program in linguistics at New York University. As a sociolinguist, I studied how subtle (and not-so-subtle) variations in the way we speak reflect who we are as social beings. I primarily analyzed quantitative data using statistical methods such as ANOVA and linear regression. I also managed to land a gig as the department webmaster, largely because I knew what an <h1> tag is.
After graduating, I spent a few years running around the New York City Metropolitan Area, eking out a living as an adjunct professor, sending out countless CVs and research statements whenever a position opened up in Kansas or Australia, and racking up financial and emotional debt that continues to accumulate interest.
Which brings us back to the present: In 2022, I became a student at Ada Developers Academy in Seattle and officially promoted my long-time hobby to a full-time occupation. If my adolescent self could see me now, would she be surprised? Perhaps not. She'd probably be sad about Geocities, though.
Trivia
My other passions include books, cats, and crossword puzzles.
Cities I've lived in, in ascending order by longitude:- -122.5° Olalla, WA
- -122.3° Seattle
- -77.7° Hornell, NY
- -74.0° NYC
- 120.6° Taichung, Taiwan