[lordofduct]

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My thinking was that I hated the previous education major because of the practice time involved. Turns out, I actually hated all the political correctness and hyper-sensitivity being crammed down our throats.

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The bureaucracy, political correctness, and hyper-sensitivity was one of my biggest issues when I was going for secondary educator. I'm a loud, angry, cuss all the time kinda guy who couldn't stand stupid people doing stupid things just because that's the way it was done.

Still... I think the drugs and booze are what caused me to drop out more than that. That just didn't help.

[AnalyticLunatic]

My own journey has rather simple origins in comparison to many of the other posters in this topic.

I have all my life been technologically savvy and used to play video games much more heavily than I do now. I had many interests though, from sports and cars, drawing and naps, and always, a great love of knowledge and reading. I was enrolled in Auto Collision Repair my Junior/Senior year of high school at the local votech, and would work in the shop every morning about 5 hrs before heading back to school. For many years I had thought to make a career out of Auto Collision. Eventually though, I was beaten down again and again by people telling me "Do it as a hobby, not a career."

When I finally began to accept this, that my passion was hobby based, I had about 2 months before I graduated high school. I had already set my sights on the college I wanted to attend, so I didn't really want to look around any more. I was looking through the course catalog and degree programs when I stumbled across Computer Programming and got to thinking it may be worth trying. Each year of high school I had managed to make it all the way to State FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) Competition for Information Technology competitions I had never even really studied for (scored 8th out of 76 last time in Cyber Security). I had also just come back as a 1st place competitor in a similar State competition through the WYSE (Worldwide Youth in Science & Engineering) organization, even better was the fact that it was my school's first time ever sending competitors.

I weighed things around, and figured why not? I had already set myself with the college and their Computer Programming division was well reputed.

Now a little over 2 years later I have graduated with my Associates, top of the program, and couldn't be happier walking into the dungeon each day to code and improve my skills.

[h4nnib4l]

I didn't make this decision until I was 26.

I dropped out of college my first time around after a semester and a half (I was a philosophy major, because I was a pothead...), and decided I was going to sell drugs, because there's good money in that industry. The third time I woke in jail, I decided that I should not be allowed to make my own decisions, so I enlisted in the Marine Corps.

During my second deployment in Iraq, I saw a video called "What the Bleep Do We Know?" during a resupply on an Air Force base, and a buddy and I decided that if we ever got out, we'd study quantum physics because it looked cool (we were two of the few guys who were smart enough to do something like that, but still dumb enough to enlist in the Marine Corps). That was a long-shot at the time, because we both planned on being career military and retiring at 40.

Well, I did end up getting out (he didn't), and registered as a physics major. That was right around the time that my back gave out (I apparently had herniated discs in my neck and lower back, as well as a compression fracture in my lower spine). I had been doing really well in my science and math classes, but on my cocktail of Percocet and Flexirol, it all turned into Greek pretty quickly. Where I had been a high A student for the first half of the semester, I barely squeaked by with Bs. And the life of a scientist really didn't look very attractive to me at that point, either. So I switched to major in business and photography, to get some "free" (I had the GI Bill, so I didn't pay for school) education to help my wife start her photography business. After a semester of that, I switched to graphic design, because I really wanted to make cool stuff on computers; maybe 3d animation or something. But I quickly realized that I was about as artistic as my dog. At the time, I was working as a phlebotomist at the local VA hospital, and I worked with a guy who was a CIS major. He told me what he was learning, and the average starting salary for a programmer/analyst at the time, so I took Intro to Programming (in VB.NET) elective. It was thing only class that I liked that semester, so I made the switch.

That was 3 1/2 years ago. I'm now a professional developer, and loving every second of it.

This post has been edited by h4nnib4l: 26 September 2012 - 02:48 PM

[wordswords]

I didn't 'end up' working as a programmer, I focused all my work time, and a lot of my free time into getting the career that I have now.

From my first experience in high school using VB5, I quickly found that I was much better than most people at programming. This was a major plus, as I went to the UK equivalent of a 'magnet' school and found it difficult to compete with my classmates at much else.

This led into hacking/cracking/breaking into computers. This was a beneficial stepping stone for me, as it got me learning C and Linux, and generally opened doors to self-learning, which is probably the most important skill I have today.

After a while, hacking became less interesting than technology in general. I applied for, and got accepted, into a top 10 UK university, to major in Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence. This taught me a lot of interesting things, and I picked up some IT experience working in summer jobs as a games tester and web developer, as well as getting some part-time work during my degree doing web development. My final year project was developing a distributed system in Java for a local software company.

My degree and previous experience got me my first job in development, and from there I gained experience in software engineering, web development, and IT support. I didn't settle in a company, working in jobs on average for about a year before moving on. I picked up a lot of valuable experience. Then personal circumstances meant I had to move back with the parents, which turned into about a year and a half of unemployment, as I got ill. I did minor things such as online freelancing and charity IT work, but no full-time job.

I applied for, and got, a 6 month placement at the BBC. From there I managed to change roles into broadcast system engineering, and that is where I've been for the last 2 years. I recently got offered a place as a software engineer on one of the departments flagship products, which means I will be trained up in cutting edge software engineering skills, such as test driven development, business driven development, and general software development using Java/Spring and AS2.