My name is Savithri Keezhottukarakadalayil Brahmadathan. Before coming to the USA, I was born and raised in the south of India. I received my Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Christ College in Thrissur, India, and I received my Master of Science degree in Biopolymer Science from Cochin University of Science and Technology in Cochin, India. Further, as part of my master’s program, I did an internship in a company called English Indian Clay Ltd. The purpose of the internship was to study the effect of using a special clay instead of carbon black in the context of natural rubber formation. During this internship, I was able to work closely with scientists and engineers in industry and gain an understanding of how to work as part of a team, how to read documentation that others have written for me, how to write documentation for others to use, as well as how to present work findings to upper management. My initial career goal was to continue in the education that I had already received, and pursue a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering. In order to do so, I met with a professor at Penn State University to see what opportunities might be available to me. In this meeting, the professor asked me about my experience with programming – at that point, I had none. He told me that, without at least some programming knowledge, becoming a successful graduate student would be very difficult. As such, I started to learn the basics of Python. As I learned more and more about programming, I became more and more interested in the idea of software as a career, not just as a tool to use in pursuit of a degree. In order to pursue software as a career, I first began by finding a number of practice problems (such as, e.g., HackerRank, Codecademy, DataCamp, etc.) to practice and improve my craft. I also enrolled in several courses, including a course from edX called “Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Pythonâ€. As I continued to practice and study, I found an online program called OpenClassrooms, where I could earn a bachelor’s-level diploma in development and jumped at the opportunity. Over the course of the next 15 months, I completed 10 projects that each helped me grow and learn as a developer. These projects focused on practical skills that would be directly applicable to real roles. For instance, I learned how to propose a project timeline and budget for a freelance web project, as well as how to design and set up a brand-new website using Ruby on Rails from scratch. I am currently working towards using these skills to land my first-ever job in software!
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