About Me

Currently I am working as an Escalation Engineer with Facebook in California.  If you came across this blog and thought "Wow, she sounds like someone I'd want on my team!" - well, thanks!  My LinkedIn profile is msgalenwhite and you can find me on Github also at msgalenwhite.

Fun facts about me:

1.  I have been a figure skater, an English Major, a Chocolatier, and a Pastry Cook – and I’ll gladly tell you how each will make me a better programmer.
2.  I know how they get the liquid centers inside Junior Mints.
3. My favorite podcasts are (in no particular order): Story Collider, Limetown, and Front-End Happy Hour.

So... why a blog?

This blog grew out of my desire to document the beginning of my career as a developer.  I wanted to be hold myself accountable in the present, but I also wanted to be able to look back and see how my thought processes have changed with more experience.

My second reason for starting a blog was that I wanted to have my "origin story" in a relatively easy-to-find place, because it hasn't been easy for me to find other people who will admit to having a similar tale.  I like to think that someone with similar issues could come across this blog and realize that it is still possible to chase and achieve your dreams.

My Origin Story

In June of 2016 I woke up to find that one of my fingers caused severe pain whenever I tried to straighten it.  My doctor told me not to worry unless it happened again – and it did.  He sent me to a specialist, who told me that I had Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in both wrists (which I had known for years, but had not been able to get taken seriously.)

The specialist also said I had a wide spread of tendinitis across both hands, and a possible injury to my "TFCC" - Triangular fibrocartilate complex.  We went through the usual treatment options of living in wrist braces, icing repeatedly, and taking absurd amounts of ibuprofen - but nothing was helping.

I was still working 40+ hours as a manager in a bakery, in pain the whole time.  When my doctor recommended surgery as my only option to lessen the pain, I agreed.  When he recommended I get surgery immediately, I decided to put it off until January of 2017 so that I would not be leaving all of my coworkers facing a tough busy season without one of their strongest workers.

After the surgery, I discovered that I had worn a hole through part of the TFCC in both wrists.  My doctor repaired it as well as he could, but the recovery for surgery like that is not the few weeks associated with Carpal Tunnel Surgery (which he did at the same time) – instead, the recovery is closer to 6-12 months.  After a few months I went back to work, but the pain returned and my doctors assured me that I was ruining my hands and wrists by staying at the job I was currently in.

They told me that I should be able to type or answer phones, but that eventually my wrists should heal (as long as I never went back to baking and pastry as a profession!)  I had already been taking Introduction to Programming classes through Khan Academy and Edx, and hearing that typing was on the “acceptable jobs” list sounded like a sign – I was finally going to make the huge leap to becoming a programmer.

This was not an easy transition.  I could only spend a limited time on the computer each day, but I devoted it to learning.  I looked into local Bootcamps and decided on Launch Academy in Boston as the one I wanted to attend – and then, in October, I made the leap.

Launch Academy has an 8-week online course before you ever arrive on campus, and then 10-weeks of on-campus instruction.  The off-campus portion was no trouble, but while on campus I was only able to spend 3-4 hours per day typing on a computer before my hands gave significant warning signs that I needed to stop.  Even though I was completing the required challenges, a programming bootcamp is about more than passing tests – it’s about learning as much as you can in a short period of time, and there was such a wealth of information and practice that I was missing out on solely because my hands still needed a little more time to heal.

I made the difficult decision to delay until the next Launch Academy cohort, giving my hands time to heal and myself a chance to practice my new knowledge.  The best way to learn programming is by programming, so that is what I did.  I assigned myself small projects and challenged myself to learn as well as let my hands heal.  While programming I also learned tricks to help my hands along.  By the time I returned to Launch Academy I had a deeper understanding of the material, more hours in my day to devote to coding, and an improved ability to know when to step away from a problem.

I set up this blog to chronicle my accomplishments, and inspire the next person who is told they could “maybe type or answer phones” that they can turn their limitations into a career in which they will thrive.