Starting the University of Pittsburgh

So I haven’t programmed all last week. We had WiCStart and I really wanted to write a blog post on it but I was so overwhelmed by just the one day I went that I laid in bed and did pretty much nothing for a whole week. There are reasons for this that go beyond the scope of this blog. Just know that I was a success early, then a failure, leading a pretty mediocre existence for the end of my teens and my whole 20 something years. Going to WiCStart and realizing that at the end of my CS degree I won’t be poor and I’ll have a great job and be able to send my mother who is poor (by government standards but she’s alright for the most part) a check every month, that I won’t be just another statistic and a casualty of my sociological caste status really scares me and excites me and I don’t know where to put all those emotions. So I stayed in bed. Success, succeeding. I’ve done that. I also fell flat on my face through nothing I could control. It got so bad at one point I thought about selling drugs just to eat. That was years ago. I have been desperate. I have been seriously clinically depressed among other things. I have had to fight for my life numerous times. To know I won’t have to do that, not anymore elates and terrifies me because I don’t know if I fail if I’ll go back to where I was. Being in that place is not fun and more terrifying than failing itself.

So that’s out of the way. WiCStart at the University of Pittsburgh was amazing. Knowing that they are throwing money at women to take on CS degrees makes me relieved because that means I won’t have to quit mid-schooling because I no longer get aid and can’t afford it. Pitt is a good CS school, ranking in the top 30% in the country, and graduates get heavily recruited by local companies and make bank right out of the gate. Recent grads have made $86k right after graduation. The average is $67k.

Tomorrow I start my first university class after being at a community college for longer than I care to admit. Then I was young and really depressed and just couldn’t get myself together to finish classes. Once I was 30 things started looking up. I know CCs and Universities are on different levels and I am excited and nervous all at once. I have been waiting for this day for months and now it is here tomorrow. The day will be long but I was assured by counselors that having ample time between classes is normal and that you can do all sorts of stuff during that time. So I’ll be taking my MacBook Pro with me every class day.

So I haven’t programmed all last week. We had WiCStart and I really wanted to write a blog post on it but I was so overwhelmed by just the one day I went that I laid in bed and did pretty much nothing for a whole week. There are reasons for this that go beyond the scope of this blog. Just know that I was a success early, then a failure, leading a pretty mediocre existence for the end of my teens and my whole 20 something years. Going to WiCStart and realizing that at the end of my CS degree I won’t be poor and I’ll have a great job and be able to send my mother who is poor (by government standards but she’s alright for the most part) a check every month, that I won’t be just another statistic and a casualty of my sociological caste status really scares me and excites me and I don’t know where to put all those emotions. So I stayed in bed. Success, succeeding. I’ve done that. I also fell flat on my face through nothing I could control. It got so bad at one point I thought about selling drugs just to eat. That was years ago. I have been desperate. I have been seriously clinically depressed among other things. I have had to fight for my life numerous times. To know I won’t have to do that, not anymore elates and terrifies me because I don’t know if I fail if I’ll go back to where I was. Being in that place is not fun and more terrifying than failing itself.

So that’s out of the way. WiCStart at the University of Pittsburgh was amazing. Knowing that they are throwing money at women to take on CS degrees makes me relieved because that means I won’t have to quit mid-schooling because I no longer get aid and can’t afford it. Pitt is a good CS school, ranking in the top 30% in the country, and graduates get heavily recruited by local companies and make bank right out of the gate. Recent grads have made $86k right after graduation. The average is $67k.

Tomorrow I start my first university class after being at a community college for longer than I care to admit. Then I was young and really depressed and just couldn’t get myself together to finish classes. Once I was 30 things started looking up. I know CCs and Universities are on different levels and I am excited and nervous all at once. I have been waiting for this day for months and now it is here tomorrow. The day will be long but I was assured by counselors that having ample time between classes is normal and that you can do all sorts of stuff during that time. So I’ll be taking my MacBook Pro with me every class day.

This post isn’t really programming related. And with the semester coming underway I don’t know how many Treehouse posts I’ll be posting. I’ll probably be doing Java posts as that’s what we’ll be learning. We have this thing called MyProgrammingLab by Pearson, sort of like MyMathLab which I am familiar with. So I’ll be posting on that, etc. I will still be doing podcasts– I recorded one last week just been too depressed to edit it. I will here soon and post it. My life is undergoing major changes. The stress is unreal. But I got this. After the life I’ve led, nothing is impossible.