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coding-house.html
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/css/bootstrap.min.css">
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="main.css">
<title>Michele Degges</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class="container">
<div class="page-header">
<h1><font color="#f3719d" size="6">Michele Degges</font> <font color="#795b51" size="5">Thoughts & Projects From my Thinkpad</font></h1>
</div>
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<div class="container">
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<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
<li><a href="#">Home</a></li>
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<div class="introduction">
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<div class="col-md-3 image">
<img style="float:left; padding-right:20px; padding-bottom: 20px" src="http://i.imgur.com/qMxESqi.png?1"></li>
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<div class="col-md-9 about-me">
<hr width="100%">
<h1 style="color:#f3719d;font-family:'Overlock, bold';font-size:26px"><p style="font-family: 'Overlock',bold'">Hi, and thanks for visiting my webpage!</p></h1>
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<p><font size="2" color="31333">I'm an energetic, passionate chick who's interested in all things tech. I love creating stylish, useful & clean mobile apps, tinkering with embedded systems, and most recently, trying to learn the ins-and-outs of web development- it's definitely a love/hate relationship.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" color="31333">When I'm not on my computer, I like to cook, travel, talk politics, and pretend like I know what I'm doing at the gym. If you'd like to get in touch, you can catch me at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" style="color:#ff7bac">[email protected].</a></font></p>
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<div class="col-md-6 thoughts">
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<p style="font-family: 'Overlock',bold'"><font color="#f3719d" size="5">CodingHouse </font> <font color="#31333" size="4" font-family="'Overlock, bold'">Scholarship Application</font></p>
<hr>
<font size="2" color="31333" font-family="'Overlock, bold'">
<p>I'm not the type of person that people typically think of when they hear the term 'Computer Nerd'- that title is usually attributed to the image of a prepubescent, skinny, pimple-faced pale boy, with thick-rimmed glasses and a stutter. He spends all of his free time indoors, only wears shorts when he's forced to attend gym class, and cannot for the life of him talk to anyone of the opposite sex (besides his overbearing mother and her handful of friends).</p>
<p>I don't seem to fit the stereotype too well. Despite the fact that I'm a gentle-lady instead of a gentleman, I have lots of interests outside of computers. My girlie side loves to cook, and hates washing dishes; loves to go shopping, and hates paying bills. I even like to get dressed up and go out sometimes, although you couldn't pay me to wear high heels all night. It's no wonder people are so surprised when I tell them I'm majoring in Computer Science, and that when I grow up, I want to be a Software Engineer.</p>
<p>Now, I should mention that I wasn't always certain this was my path. When I was a kid, my brothers were the ones fascinated with games like Morrowind, 007, and Wolfenstein. They stayed up all night developing hacks to level-up their skills and characters as fast as possible. My mother was the only one in the family who had the talent to rip them away from their screens long enough to eat dinner. I was happy enough just to get a seat next to them and maybe step-in for a minute or two when they needed to use the restroom. For some reason, I always had more fun watching them than I did when I played.</p>
<p>As I grew up, I began to slowly venture into the world of gaming. I thought it was incredible that people were able to dream-up and actually create whole new worlds. Not only that, they were able to sell them for modest prices and distribute all over the globe, which allowed people from all walks of life to connect, and play, and just be happy. I still find it amazing that a kid in California can be playing the same game and chatting with a kid from Malaysia or Taiwan. </p>
<p>My curiosity was peaked, though I have to be honest and say it took me a long time to get used to the notion of programming. When I started college and took my first programming course in Scheme, I about dropped dead. Nothing made any sense at all. I remember asking "Lambda-whaaaat??" in my first lab, which made everyone laugh as it was supposed to, but was also a completely sincere question.</p>
<p>It was a rough semester, but the more I studied and practiced, the better it got- the better I got. Complicated concepts like recursion started making sense. I learned how to program in C, Python, and Java, and made use of their many different libraries. I learned how to use (and even create) different data structures and compile multiple files to create a single program. As my assignments started getting more challenging, my programs started getting longer and more complex. The most important skill I learned, though, was how to start learning on my own- how to find a way through when confronted with a brick wall- and by now, I've certainly seen thousands of them.</p>
<p>Learning how to debug, first with print statements, and then with actual debuggers, has created some of the most satisfying memories I can recall. I had no idea just how reliant I was on my teachers and admittedly, sites like Stackoverflow, to help me find out where I was going wrong. About 30% of the time, I didn't understand the problem correctly. The other 70% of the time, I had the logic right but could not understand why I wasn't getting the correct output, or why my files wouldn't compile.</p>
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<div class="col-md-6 continued" style="padding-top:130px">
<font size="2" color="31333">
<p>Once I learned how to debug my code, I blossomed. I started to become much more self-reliant, and as my skills grew, so did my confidence. I was no longer afraid to mess with other people's code, or try out a new language, or follow a tutorial to learn a different skill. Failure was no longer a possibility, because I knew that no matter how many problems I faced, I had the knowledge needed to eliminate them one by one. </p>
<p>I went through tutorials on Codecademy and completed challenges through CodeEval. Shortly after, we had a meeting at work and I mentioned that we should really get someone to create a website, because "Who doesn't have a website these days?" That's how I got started in web dev, and that's how http://phitlab.org came to exist (with the help of Wordpress and Firebug, of course).</p>
<p>It's been a few years since then, and I'm still very much a beginner. I'll be graduating in just a few weeks, but I feel like I have a lot more to learn before I can start working in the industry. While most of my fellow students applied to places like GM and Microsoft, I decided to apply to CodingHouse. I want to not only get the basics of Web Development under my belt, but to really understand how everything works together, and to create beautiful, unique things. If I'm accepted, I'll work as hard as I can to make that happen. </p>
There's many things I don't know and that I'm not sure of, but working with computers is not one of them. I have grown to love programming. I love the challenge, and the rush I get when I've finally solved a problem that's puzzled me for days. I love getting frustrated, and breaking through that frustration, and then getting frustrated again. I've never been so confused and elated and proud of myself- sometimes all at the same time.</p>
<p>Just yesterday, I finished creating my own webpage- which, by the way, you're looking at! I didn't use anyone else's layout- I created my own. And even though it's pretty simple, and it took me a pretty long time to create, and it's not actually 100% finished, none of that really matters. I started with a blank page and was able to create something completely new out of it. That's the sort of thing that makes me really happy, and it's the sort of thing I'd really love to do for a living. </p>
<p>Despite our differences, me and the 'Computer Nerd' I mentioned earlier do have two traits in common: persistence, regardless of the outcome, and regardless of any internal or external factors that try to get in our way; and passion. My brothers also share these traits. It took me awhile to catch on, but I did, and it's amazing (and sort of ironic) that I've become enamored with it, too. </p>
<p>I really hope to begin CodingHouse in January and continue on this path. I can't wait to look at the projects I'm just finishing up now, like this website, five months from now. By that time I'll have graduated from college, and maybe even from CodingHouse!</p>
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<center><img src="http://i.imgur.com/8bjqXbn.png?1"></center>
</div>
</div>
</nav>
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<footer class="footer">
<p> © 2015 Michele Degges</p>
</footer>
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