---
title: '"This is fine" (the meme)'
osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/conferences/seagl2019/program/proposals/679
beginning: '2019-11-15T16:15:00.000-08:00'
end: '2019-11-15T16:35:00.000-08:00'
resources:
  internet_archive_identifier: thisisfine
presenters:
- name: Kate Pond
  affiliation: Allen Institute for Immunology
  osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/users/925
  gravatar_id: 2127e6a348fe211a31881860feb77af6
  biography: Part developer, part interpretive park ranger, & 100% awesome! Coding
    all the things & loving it!
---

Over the last year and a half, I've been attempting to complete my career change from a park ranger to a developer. In that year and a half, I have learned Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, and React.js at a coding bootcamp, Swift and XCode an internship, and SQL, ASP.NET, and Typescript during another internship. I've also been introduced to C#, C++, Java, and Python. And even though each time I started a new language felt like my life was going up in flames, over time I started to see the similarities of the languages and found it easier to read programs written in different languages. However, I also started to notice how not having a "specialty" language made me feel like I would never get a job as a developer. It was really important to me during this time to realize that being a jack of all trades, but feeling like a master of none doesn't make a person a failure. It makes that person a master of being flexible and getting up to speed quickly. Here are some tips on keeping your sanity if asked to forget everything you've learned about a language, framework, or tool, and start a new one, and keep moving forward.

**What the audience will learn:**

- What I did to get up to speed on new languages, frameworks, and/or tools, including finding and using tutorials, joining communities, and asking colleagues questions.
- How I used grounding, affirmations, and reaching out to friends and networks to get through tough times of change.
