Sitting at a desk for eight hours a day for four days and doing something I have never done is literally the most exciting thing I have done this summer. My expectation was I knew what I was getting myself into. I know some of my classmates  who code and the thought of code scared me. On the other hand, I was excited because I never had a job before; As a result, I knew I shouldn’t stress too much because I would learn how to do it on the job. The reality of it all is-  am struggling like the company Uber; however, my mindset has changed for I honestly believe I can actually do this.

My mindset has changed because before all of this I thought I would never even dabble  in the STEM field after the rough experience I had freshman year (oh the horror).  Now I may not be a computer scientist after this or a coding whiz but I know my skills are expanding and I can’t wait to tell people that I code. It is actually easy(ish) once I pay attention to detail and relax. I know I am behind but I’m excited to learn CSS next week and I may be the last one to get it but I will complete my website by the end of seven weeks (on my dear ol’ popeyes chicken I will) On the bright side, everyone and the work is pretty chill.

A lot of people think if you major or have a career in the arts you have to be innovative and creative. A lot of people don’t associate creativity with science and technology. But learning how to code, I see there is a lot of creativity involved in computer science. First of all when I learn HTML , I learn the foundation of the website. This was honestly the most boring part and excruciating part of the website i had to endure how to do. After that I learned CSS which is how you style the website and make it fancy. I love this part because this is where the creativity comes into place. The Css is what makes your website different than anyone else’s. You can choose which colors and where you want to put the colors. I learned you don’t just have to type in the value of “blue” or “red” to the property of “color”. You can choose “light blue” or type in the value of a color through hexadecimals to find a specific color like a magenta. Also You can add features such as a slide-show or a parallax on your website. Computer Science is like math where if you don’t put in the right formulas it won’t work. However at the same time it is like acting for you have to constantly improvise and adjust the website like an actor improv and grows his/her character for a movie.

The most memorable speakers are the ones who put memes in their presentation. I am talking about the women named May Marks. She is a middle aged women who works as a business economic developer at the Greater Louisville Inc. for the Chamber of Commerce. Through my internship as a website developer at Empowered, we have the opportunity to listen to successful entrepreneurs and business women. May Mark’s story was far from your normal ‘rags to riches’ story.  She graduated from NKU with a major in sports management in hopes of becoming a sports agent. That was 2009 during one of America’s worse recession. So obviously that didn’t really work out. Through memes of the pessimistic cat, she talked about how she always felt lesser than others because everyone was either working their dream job or getting married. She had neither. She later tried starting a education publication business with her mom, and they didn’t know much about investing, so that failed in four years. Up until two years ago she was living in her mom’s house, and had no traditional job experience. However besides the memes, one thing stood out to me. She said the keys to success is flexibility and not comparing yourself to others. May was so used to being her own boss but when she was offered the job at chamber of commerce, she didn’t say no to working for others. She took the job and just adapted. If you are working in business in particular flexibility is key. The market changes constantly some things might be “in” and later be “out” in a couple of years.  You also have to listen to people’s ideas. Don’t be stubborn and stick to your one product that you want to sell sometimes you have to go with what is “hot”. The chamber of commerce is a consultant group that helps non-profit and entrepreneurs more on the technology side develop their business. I want to get an internship at a non-profit or work in a nonprofit so I hope there is one in Danville, Kentucky….