November of 2016 I decided to make a change in my career. I was pretty happy where I was at. I had just won the CEO AWARD for the year from a company with 3,500 employees. I was a District Team Lead and in charge of 8 stores. The Divisional Manager offered me a position to move back to Utah and become a Regional Training Manager and work with him in his office. It was a big decision with great benefits.
This was one of my dream jobs. However, I didn’t know that I would be traveling Mon-Thursday, 3 out of 4 weeks. Something I wasn’t willing to do. My family was too important. This was the next step in my career or it was to become a District Leader and I would be in charge of 16 stores. However, when you go into training you have to move to Texas for one year and then whatever position comes up your expected to move there. You can say no once, after that your pretty much going to the next position.
So it was time for a change. It was a difficult decision but I knew it was for the best. I left my job to become a developer. I went to a bootcamp called RefactorU. During the bootcamp when we were making very little money and living mostly off what we had saved, we found out my wife was pregnant. We weren’t planning on getting pregnant, so it caught us off guard. I was excited inside. I had always wanted a boy. We waited 3 month to tell our girls. When we told them they held hands jumping up and down saying: “We’re having a baby! We’re having a baby!” It was the cutest thing.
Things started to 6 weeks into our bootcamp, the owner told us that he was shutting down RefactorU. We were all shocked! Unfortunately it was done very poorly. As we were learning JavaScript a brand new language and trying to study they would have people come in the side door buying items off of Craigslist and hauling tables and chairs as we were trying to learn. Literally things were falling apart as we were trying to learn and we paid a lot of money to go to this course, which was one of the highest rated schools besides Galvanize. (Which was about 10k more). I couldn’t change the situation, however I knew that I quit my job to change careers and I wasn’t going to just “try it out“, I was putting 10 hours daily. After school I would stay 2 hours after. I was always the last to leave. I needed to make sure I didn’t waste this opportunity. I knew I couldn’t rely on the school at this point to teach me so I took advantage of every day.
During this time period you wouldn’t believe it but there was a note on the door at our girls school stating that a kid in the class was found with lice. We brought our girls home and both of them had it. It was the worst! I literally scrubbed with a pick for an 1 1/2hr EACH child. I remember it was 10:30pm by the time we were done. I was ornery and fed up with everything. My wife was blow drying their hair when I could still see eggs. We were all so tired, my wife pregnant and me having a long day at the coding bootcamp. The girls way past their bed time that we put them to bed.
I was happy that the next day was Saturday. I spent 2 hours each kid making sure everything was removed. I would never wish lice upon anyone! We started Laundry early that morning, literally washing everything. Drying everything. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you…. However, our washer broke. YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!! I was at a low point. No job because I was going to school, wife sick and pregnant, kids lice, school falling apart, my brain stressed trying to learn literally a new language (HTML, CSS, Javascript, Angular) in a course of 10 weeks so it was drinking from a water hose. Then my washer breaks……Ugh… I picked myself up, found a washer on Craigslist and washed the last load. That was the one blessing is that the washer broke on our last load of laundry.
February came and I graduated from RefactorU on Feb 23rd. I started applying to jobs. I formed a group with 2 other students from my coding camp so we could keep each other accountable and continue learning as we were looking for jobs
