The hockey game that inspired me to become a software engineer

You know that question you’re asked midway through an interview—”what motivates you?” Of course you do, we’ve all had to answer it at least a few times. To be honest, I didn’t have a great answer to that question until age 26. Through the first half of my twenties, I’d offer a vague, uninspiring response when asked about my motivations. Was this because I am an uninspired, unmotivated person? Good heavens, no! It’s because I just didn’t know the answer. I’m not ashamed to say this, in fact I’d bet very few 20-something year-olds know the nucleus of their drives. And I didn’t know know mine until I watched a hockey game.

Yup, a hockey game. I’ll explain. It was early 2014 and the winter olympics in Sochi, Russia were underway. I was enjoying a Saturday morning with my dad, and we decided to watch the U.S. men’s hockey team take on the heavily favored Russian squad. After a thrilling regulation and overtime period, the teams remained tied entering shootouts. TJ Oshie, an American who, until then was relatively unknown, took six of the U.S. team’s eight penalty shots, scoring on four of them, and ultimately winning the game. Oshie’s 67% success rate dwarfed the status quo for shootouts, and cemented him in U.S. hockey lore.

Oshie’s heroics, for many, made for a headline in the sports section and a conversation starter at the water cooler come Monday morning. But for me, they were much more. I saw something in Oshie’s performance that struck a chord with me, that spoke to me, that stayed with me for months…the skill set! Something had dawned on me: I was mesmerized by the depth and acuity of Oshie’s skill set; he excelled at something—shootouts—to the point that his peers trusted him to deliver in a high-pressure situation. And he did.

This is what I wanted for myself and for my career. I’d learned something about myself; I want a distinct skill, I want to become a specialist, and continue to hone that skill set until I’m elite at it. I found my motivation! I found what gets me out of bed in the morning! I wanted to be the TJ Oshie of…something!

Now the tricky part: deciding what that skill would be. This sudden clairvoyance into my career preferences meant that a career change was on deck. Until then, I’d worked in education in multiple roles at multiple schools, but the education industry just didn’t offer the distinct, challenging skill I was looking to build a career on. This is when my fiancee and better half recommended software engineering. After several years of hesitantly poking around Codecademy and its ilk on weekends and in my free time, I decided to double down on coding and make it the centralized skill I’d been yearning for. So I pulled the plug on my career in education, and jumped into the deep end of software engineering as a Bloc student.

And here I am today, fighting my way through the difficult, frustrating, but downright fascinating world of software engineering, and loving every minute…except for when my RSpec tests don’t pass!