A quarantine full of chances

On March 15, 2020, a quarantine was imposed in the city of Barcelona, Spain. I was working as a children's teacher in an English academy, so from one day to the other I found myself locked up at home with a lot of free time in my day. I studied for a degree in education and worked for many years in schools. The last few years I was working in yoga, emotional education and English workshops. 

The truth is that for some time I had felt that I had dedicated enough years to education. I was very attracted to the idea of developing different skills than the ones I had been developing since college. I decided to start an online javascript course at freecodecamp. I didn't understand much of what I was doing, but I liked it. 

One day I did one of the exercises, which was to calculate the sum of the odd numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. I remember that I went to sleep that night feeling an enormous satisfaction, because I had learned something new. The same with the following days, every night I thought about the new things I had learned, and that motivated me a lot.

One day, my Google feed showed me news about a free computer course offered by cs50. It was a small detail, my Google feed, but at that moment I realized that my interests had changed, or at least had expanded into a field that, a month ago, meant nothing to me.

I found myself coding from 9am to 6pm, and coming up with solutions to test in the middle of the night. That's when I started thinking about changing careers. The first thing I thought was to do a bootcamp, but paying for a private one was not a feasible option for me, so I put together a study program that would give me the basis to get a job. I also started to change my LinkedIn profile and my cv. That moment was very difficult, because I felt that what I was doing was crazy, that it wasn't going to work and that I shouldn't even be trying. But since we were still quarantined, I didn't have many other options, so I kept going. 

I started applying for jobs in the industry, and even though I didn't have high hopes of getting hired, I wanted to get my first interview, because I knew it was going to be the hardest one and I believe that the hard things should be done as soon as possible. 

I got my first interview for a job I had applied to because I knew a little bit about the stack. I remember that the interviewer told me that he admired what I was doing, and that he was going to send me for the technical interview because I deserved the opportunity. His words gave me a lot of strength in the midst of uncertainty. 

While I was doing the technical test, I found out about a free Bootcamp in Barcelona, factoría F5. I applied and was selected. A few days after starting the bootcamp, I received the news that I had not passed the technical test of my job interview but I didn't care. I was in the bootcamp and I had already had my first interview in the sector.

The bootcamp was an incredible experience where I learned a lot. Many Thoughtworkers came to the bootcamp with masterclasses on different topics, and meeting them made me want to be part of Thoughtworks. I applied for a Grad Developer role and here I am today, after going to Thoughtworks University (TWU) and working on an account.

At the beginning I didn't tell anyone what I was doing, just in case... And when I started to tell, I realized that there are many people who wanted to change, who wanted to learn different things and that many times they didn't dare to do so because they were afraid.

When I was in the process of change, I was looking for stories of people who had made the career change, stories in which I could see myself and evidence that it is possible. This is what motivated me to write this post. That maybe there is someone today who, like me a year ago, feels that he/she has no other options but to change, and is afraid. I hope that my story encourages them and shows that it is possible!