Lightweight Eats

In college, I had the opportunity to take two computer programming classes. One was a general engineering requirement, and the other was specific to my major. I absolutely loved both classes, even when they were difficult or frustrating.

Still, I found computer programming to be a lot like mathematics: very intimidating as an inexperienced woman.

It's not that either department at Princeton was unfriendly to women. Certainly there were successful women in both departments, many of whom were friends and acquaintances. They were perfectly lovely people who all had one thing in common: they were really quite good!

Of course, most people who attend Princeton are really quite good at most things they do. It's the culture of the place—a difficult, stressful, fun culture. But as a woman, already out of place in those male-dominated fields, feeling doubly out of place for lack of skill was just too much. And as such, I shied away from male-dominated fields.

("Wait, didn't you major in civil engineering?" you might ask. Indeed, I did; and not only was our department at least half women, it turned out I had quite a knack for it.)

Clearly, I am not pursuing a career in my chosen major. There is a lot of fun work in civil engineering—lots of problem solving and number crunching, both of which I love. But the reasons I have chosen not to pursue civil engineering are too many to list here.

Instead, I've considered a number of other options: studying chemistry and gaining admission to medical school; earning an MBA and going into business; pursuing a graduate degree in nutrition; taking accounting classes; and more. But ultimately, I can't justify the expense of these options, especially not while pursuing rowing.

After a few failed attempts at MIT Opencourseware, I finally stumbled upon something built for me: Codecademy. It's an online introduction to programming, so I can refamiliarize myself with coding logic and learn the syntax in various new languages.

I'm not sure where this will take me. There are a lot of fun projects I'd like to work on, including re-designing this blog. I will waste time and make mistakes, I'm sure, but I suspect even that will be pretty fun. And maybe I will eventually be able to produce something useful.

Any programmers out there? Any advice for getting started? Any cool projects I should attempt?

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