The Adventure Continues!

The MBA Continues

After graduation from college, I took 9 months to travel, explore, learn and experience.  I called it my MBA, my “Most Beautiful Adventure.”

I had thought that my MBA would end when I ran out of plane tickets and travel time.  I have started my job at LinkedIn, working in the “real world” as a Business Leadership Program Associate.  Those are a lot of words to say I’m in a rotational program that takes me through Recruiting, Sales, and possibly other alternative roles within LinkedIn.

Life in San Francisco and work in Silicon Valley is an adventure in itself—and there are plenty of stories about these to come.  The catalyst for this post, however, is a newer, even more exciting adventure.

 

The Back-Story

For a long time now, I have been searching for a web development program that would help me build my skills and love of coding, and pursue a career in web development.  But I was always deterred by the high price tag and the high time commitment—impossible as an early-in-career professional with a full time job.  I had all but given up when I came across Thinkful, an online program where I can learn at my own pace, on my own time, and still receive hands-on mentorship from an incredible (live!) teacher over skype.  And with this structure, my 3 hours of commuting would suddenly change from being a huge roadblock to being a huge opportunity for growth and development.

Too good to be true, I thought.  And for a while I was right: I still couldn’t afford the price tag.

The Punchline

That is, until Thinkful offered up the chance to apply for a full scholarship.  Through a partnership with Girl Develop It, a nonprofit organization that provides workshops and mentorship sessions to female coders that I have been involved with for some time, Thinkful offered 3 women the chance to take any of their development courses for free.

All I needed to do was to prove my passion—I explained my goals (to advance my career as a web developer and to help better support Code For Humanity), I wrote a few short essays, I spoke with an interviewer, and I waited.

And by some wonderful piece of luck I was selected.

And here I am, enrolled in this course of my dreams.  I will advance my skills in CSS and HTML, as well as learning more “hard” technical skills: Jquery, responsive design, Ajax, hosting sites from “scratch,” and more.  At the end of the class I will have a full portfolio of websites that I’ve created from nothing.  I can feel it—this is my opportunity of a lifetime, my transformation from amateur web design enthusiast  to semi-professional web developer.

I could not be more excited, or more grateful.

Although I have only been in the course for a week, here are some of the things I have learned already:

 

If you believe in something enough, someone will believe in you.

I don’t know how this works but it does.  I believe in the power of web development to change the world and bring economic opportunity to others.  I believe that I can balance my job and my passions, and have a great time doing it.  And somehow, like magic, Thinkful and Girl Develop it have decided to believe in me in return.

I am endlessly thankful.

Embrace the Yes

Yes, I have a full time job (sometimes, it feels like more than full-time).  Yes, I commute 3 hours a day.  Yes, I can use both of those to pursue my dreams—you just have to look at it in the right way.  Working with Thinkful allowed me to turn my commute—that obstacle that was blocking me from pursuing my education in development—into my greatest asset: time set aside each day to work and learn.

Do Something for Other People

In pursuing this course, I am following my own personal dream.  But what keeps me motivated is that my work with Thinkful is not just for me.  It is for my community at LinkedIn, who will hopefully benefit from the web development projects I take on there, and for my non-profit in Madagascar, as I can better support students there to learn these skills and pursue their dreams as well.  It is for Alissa, my incredible Thinkful mentor who gives so much of her time and energy to me and asks for nothing but completed assignments in return.  It is for the people at Girl Develop It who believed in me enough to put forward their resources to allow me to follow my dreams.

 

Through my work at LinkedIn and Code for Humanity, I hope I can pay it forward and help bring as much opportunity to others as GDI and Thinkful have brought to me.  Let this Most Beautiful Adventure continue!

A Photographic Peek into Life in Morocco!

Musical equipment in the Kasbah

What happens when you get locked out of your apartment– Megan scales the wall!

Web class at the ALC

Hanane in the Market, meat shopping

The street where we live: 83 Rue Bazo

Tea!

Train to Fez… and everywhere else you could imagine!

Fez

Salam!

Too much cuteness

Cuteness faceoff

Cactus silk shop in Fez

Fez

Tannery, Fez

Tannery, Fez

Megan and I in Fez

Tiles tiles tiles

Megan and I in Fez

Megan the Berber Princess

Berber Models

Berber couple

Berber couple

A wall… painted on a wall?

Too meta…

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

The Chellah– ancient Roman ruins from the year 40 AD

Berber musician

Sweets and goodies in the Medina, Rabat

In the Medina, Rabat– Budgies for sale!

Buying khobs (bread)

Moroccan Morning Run

11/13/14

Something about the cool gray of the morning, the sea fog slipping up over the Kasbah walls and spilling into the streets, makes my feet urge for a run.  I had wanted to before, and had a few friends who had run through the city, but my “culturally sensitive” side always held me back— should I, a white-face blonde-haired non-muslim— really give myself one more reason to stand out by loping down the road with my headphones in and my head un-scarved?

I finally decided that this was the morning to try— I would go for a ten minute run and if I got too many stares or comments or just felt a bad “vibe,” that would be my last run in Morocco. 

On with the shoes, in with the headphones.  On with the ankle-length leggings and the wrist-length shirt.  I am happy for the chill of the morning as I cover every inch of my skin other than my face. 

Outside the walls of the Kasbah, I turn and break into a jog, following the sea wall down toward the ocean district.  Not twenty steps down the hill, imagine my “culturally sensitive” surprise when I see a middle-aged Moroccan woman jogging back up towards me!  Her head is covered by a carefully pinned black scarf, and she wears a full green velvet track suit that must have been made in the 90s.  She has her ear buds in, and when I grin and give her a thumbs up in passing, she smiles shyly back.

On my short jog, no one makes a comment to me or even looks at me askance.  In fact, I pass another group of women and several groups of men working out on the pier, the women all wearing head scarves as they do lunges and sit ups on the mats they have laid out.  I have heard that things have been changing in Morocco, and in Rabat especially—that women are getting more involved in sports and athleticism, even those who choose to keep their head scarves on as they do so.  It is a beautiful marriage of tradition and transformation.

And as I jog along the water I know just why all the people are out here, for the same reason as me: to fill up with the beauty of the morning, to move their limbs in a sort of celebration of living, to get that fresh feeling as if your insides have been washed with morning dew.  Looking down over the ledge the ocean gives us a distracting display of waves stirred up by last night’s storms, breaking in curling towers and draining off the tiers of stone in the most beautiful waterfall imaginable.  There must be nothing so lovely in the world as waves retreating off stone.

Modern Moroccan Museum and Cultural Change

11/13/14

On my way to work today I had an extra 20 minutes to spare and decided to stop by the new modern art museum on Mo. V.  It opened while I was in Morocco in September, but I hadn’t had the chance to visit yet, and its modern steel-and-glass structure entices me every time I walk by.  Best of all, it’s completely free, so I had to give it a try.

Inside, it is a beautiful space, with art arranged on each floor and separated by era (running from 1900 to today).  It was so interesting to explore floor by floor and notice the clear shift in attitude of the artwork.  The early 20th century art was influenced by increased contact with Europe and is whimsical and fantastical, images of one-eyed or two-headed creatures are not uncommon in the paintings.  The arabic letters, symbols, and architecture are also clear in the sculptures and artwork, and as the 20th century progresses the forms become more abstract, with bright, gaudy colors and bold shapes and figures.

And then there is the most modern artwork, the post-20th-century pieces, housed in the basement of the building.  They are suddenly dark and highly disturbing: bath tubs covered in leather, photos of people that have been edited to look as though they are losing their brains or having their hearts ripped out, statues bound up in a tangle of ropes and bent under the weight of a sack of human faces tied to their backs.  Most, to me, are not even tasteful—some look haphazardly made, as if a child could have put it together.  Well, perhaps a child with a deeply disturbed mental state…

What has happened in the Moroccan artistic psyche in the last 15 years?  And I wonder if it has been reflected in the culture of the Moroccan people as well, or if this is simply art trying to push boundaries, trying to make a statement of its own. 

Code for Humanity Class at Last!

11/12/13

Today, at last, was my day of class!! After having been pushed back a week and a half, I am finally starting to teach for Code for Humanity at the ALC.  Yesterday, Michael had been concerned that not enough students had “signed up,” and decided to push the start day to today— and now, I have begun class with so many students that we may have to break into two sections! I have 8 students in class now (the maximum capacity) between the ages of 22 and 54, from all walks of life.  The differences between here and Madagascar are striking.  Here, firstly, students are all business, and learn incredibly fast.  I finished my lesson plan with time to spare, even with the late start.  In Madagascar, half our time was spent teasing, having dance-offs, or eating food. Neither of these methods are “better,” but I am glad to have such eager students, particularly when we have so little time to learn.

Most of all, however, I am simply joyful to be teaching again.  I did not realize how much I would miss it— even though I knew I loved it— and just this single class makes all the hard work and occasional frustration of setting up a program feel completely worthwhile.