I Put Away My Stethoscope and Grabbed My Laptop

Hello friends,

I figured since this is my first post, I should talk about my story and how I got here. My name is Amanda, and I used to be(well, technically still am according to my license) a Registered Nurse. I graduated nursing school in 2017, and worked as an RN until Fall of 2021.

Earlier in my nursing career, I spent my time working in hospitals. I worked on med-surg floors, but spent most of my time working as a Labor and Delivery/Postpartum nurse. I loved the work, it was incredibly rewarding. But as you could guess, when things were good on the L&D unit - they were good - and then things were bad on the L&D unit - they were REALLY bad. I'm talking, go home from your shift and cry yourself to sleep bad.
Taking that into consideration, and the difficulty I had managing the odd hours with being a mother, I ultimately decided to give up the nursing work that I loved and I transitioned into a clinical surgical sub-specialty role.

My clinic job was a huge dud. It was the worst job I ever had, the job was routine and not intellectually challenging in the slightest...not to mention the leadership was horrendous, too. This was the spring of 2021, and this job is what caused me to second guess my place in the nursing field. I knew I couldn't go back to working hospital hours, and I wasn't finding the clinic work to be enjoyable or financially great either. So, I began spending my time before bed in the evenings researching alternative options for a job. I spent WEEKS looking, applying to different jobs(none that I was all that excited about), and there was nothing. I didn't want to go into nurse leadership or nurse education, so my options were quite limited.

My husband and I talked about me potentially going back to school, but I knew that if I was going to invest more money into my education that it wouldn't be for anything nursing related. I'll never forget the night that triggered the events which led me to where I am today...

I was laying in bed looking on my phone, and I literally googled "career shift jobs for nurses but not nursing related" -- LOL -- up until that night all I could find was "Become a Nurse Leader" or "Get Your Masters to Teach Nursing" or programs for advancing to a DNP. About 8 or 9 google pages in, I came across a blog from a random woman, and it was titled "Why I left Nursing to be a Software Engineer"...okay, I'll admit, I was intrigued.

I clicked into her blog and read her post. In her post she described how she had the same type of nursing career fatigue that I was experiencing, and we both similarly no longer felt challenged or intellectually challenged. She went on to discuss how her husband was a software engineer and how he turned her on to coding bootcamps. Up until this post, I had no idea what a coding bootcamp was, or that they even existed. This woman wrote that she did a 10 week long coding bootcamp, with zero coding experience going into it, and after the 10 weeks was up it only took her 3 months to land a full-time software engineering job making over six figures. She also talked about how she loved her job, that it was the best decision she ever made and how it aligns so much with everything she felt she was missing in nursing.

The very next morning I started researching coding bootcamps. I came across an Intro to Python course with Hackbright Academy. They were running a special for the class, it was only $250 to sign up and it ran for 5 weeks with classes every Tuesday and Thursday night, and Saturday afternoons. I signed up thinking it was a good opportunity to get my feet wet and to find out if it was something I could potentially see myself doing in the future. Fast forward 5 weeks, and I loved it! I was hooked, and I knew it was what I wanted to do.

I applied for a 12 week full-time full-stack program with Hackbright Academy, and to my surprise I was accepted! The program I applied for was pretty competitive since it was sponsored by Target, meaning they paid for tuition and gave students connections/mentors and resources through the program. Fast-forward 12 weeks...I learned how to build a fully functioning web application and I was hired on to be an intern with Target Tech!

I still have a lot to learn, but I am really happy with the decisions I made and the opportunities I was presented with. I worked really hard and this career change required a lot of determination, but it was all worth it. I'm hoping that this blog post will reach someone who might be in the shoes I was in almost a year ago.

Until the next post,

Amanda