My Path Essay

During my early education, I struggled a lot in school, especially with math. I never received help from my teachers, and when COVID hit, I discovered that my math teacher was giving me work 3 grade levels below, which we were never informed of. My mom was very influential, as she did everything she could to bring me not only back up to grade level, but above it. I needed to be homeschooled for another two and a half years after COVID due to my medical conditions. Throughout this time, I managed to exceed grade level, become advanced in all subjects, and get accepted into CTE, leading me to the path I’m on now.

Currently, I am in the CAWD program (Computer Animation Web Design) at CTE. I chose this specific program because it provided me with college-level learning in many areas of interest, such as digital art, traditional art, coding, web development, game design, etc. So far, it has been a great experience. I have discovered new likes and dislikes within my interests, and have decided that I want to dive deeper and learn more about software engineering.

In CAWD, I am being prepared for the technical work field. This field requires many employability traits such as work ethic/punctuality, working in groups, working independently, and listening and speaking. I feel that the traits I am best with currently are work ethic and working independently. I am also good at working with others, but overall, I believe there is still plenty of room for improvement with all of these traits, which CAWD is teaching and providing support in. I am leaving school with a variety of skills, such as being able to make 3D models in Blender, use those models to create animations, and make visuals in video games in Unreal Engine. I can also code game functionality with Unreal’s blueprint code, and I know multiple coding languages like Python, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, MySQL, etc. I also use these coding languages to create websites with VS Code.

After I graduate, I hope to either go to college to learn more about software development/engineering or find a web development job right after high school. I am considering taking a gap year to save up money before I go to college, so I don’t have much debt. I plan to meet one of these goals by searching and applying for jobs or colleges during this final school year. I need to reach out and explore colleges I'm interested in, and do some research to find jobs in my current area.