For those who don’t know, I’m really into computer programming. It’s been a big dream of mine to be a professional programmer for a long time now, at least halfway through Elementary school I knew programming was what I wanted to do.
I started with scratch in 4th grade as a class that my school started doing.
It evolved into me joining code ninjas to learn more about programming, but I left before getting to actual programming.
I taught myself web development with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ya know, the basics.
I never fully got into web development though, and didn’t know anything complex or valuable.
This changed in high school when I enrolled in a computer programming class. This class made me realize my potential and renewed my urge to do programming again.
We were learning Python as per the standard course, I learned a bit, took my CodeHS certification for it, passed it, and now I have it hanging up in my room and somewhere on my website. But this certification unlocked a route I couldn’t have even dreamt of.
I was approached by my teacher about going to a regional competition for Computer Programming hosted by SkillsUSA. I thought this was pretty cool so I decided to go. I decided to do JavaScript for the competition since I could use it with HTML (which I know like the back of my hand), which was an amazing decision because I couldn’t do it in Python even if I wanted to. There were 2 challenges: Make a student grading calculator and a calorie calculator with instructions on how long to run to burn the calories.
The student grading calculator was a breeze, but it took an hour, which was a little over half the time allocated for both challenges.
I copied the format that I used for the grading calculator and used it in the calorie calculator. It worked for the most part but as soon as I was finishing up the running calculation logic, I ran out of time. No joke, I missed a quotation and a parenthesis.
Tragic, I spent all that time just to run out of time, I didn’t qualify for state, it is what it is I guess. A few weeks later my teacher came up to me again talking about someone deciding not to go, and that if another person decided not to go, I’d be next in line. I of course took this chance to say that I’d be more than willing, and who would’ve guessed, the person that was in front of me decided to go to state for game development instead, leaving me as a candidate to go to state.
What. I’m going to state? I can’t believe this, I need to prepare. I did a lot of challenges from Seminole State College, joined a few development studios, programmed a few Discord bots (node.js), everything I could think of to learn as much JavaScript as I could.
Now we’re here, March 31st, 2025. I’m going to the SkillsUSA Texas State Leadership & Skills Conference in Corpus Christi in two days, competing in computer programming against the state of Texas, and I have the chance to go to SkillsUSA’s NLSC (National Leadership & Skills Conference), “The Largest Gathering of America’s Future Skilled Workforce”. I’m not going to lie, this is a lot of pressure. A lot is being expected of me, and I don’t think I’m ready for this.
I know I’m not going to make it to NLCS, there are classes for this, there are people who have been coding their entire lives, and I don’t stand a chance.
I guess I’ll just go to have fun, I’ll try my best, make a few friends, and maybe grow my career network for when I’m ready to go out there and program stuff.
I don’t think anyone will read this, but if you did, thank you. I appreciate you. I hope you have a good day.