I, like Dante, “found myself/ In dark woods, the right road lost”, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the middle of a PhD program. In the dim forest of confusion, I had existential, and also very immediate doubts — like how I would pay bills. My journey into programming began here.

On a shared Google doc, my dissertation committee and I were brainstorming a list of approximately 100 texts, either books or academic articles, that I would read, then be tested on in a year. My initial hopes of studying Japanese literature were quickly quelled by my committee: I didn’t know how to read Japanese; there wasn’t enough time to learn the language during my PhD program, and none of the committee members were Japanese literature experts. My committee did the best to help me adapt my direction, and I settled on a variation of global poetry of 20th and early 21st centuries. Still, I largely felt uninspired.

During this same time, Civilization V sparked another type of inspiration. And, on my MacBook Air I began my wandering. Civ V was the highest version supported on my computer, although VI had been out for years. I worried my computer would overheat and fry my CPU. Hours and hours were spent procrastinating my PhD. When I’d start to research books for my exam, I gave up after a few minutes. Instead I found myself on the couch, playing Civ.

I had played the original Civilization game as a child. My dad was an earlier adopter of home PCs. We had much of the early shareware and software games. I remember games like the Castle of Dr. Brain, Lemmings, The Incredible Machine, and, an even more horrific, earlier, game called Baby Bouncers. (In this 4-bit game, babies would be thrown from burning buildings. The player’s goal was to use a stretcher to safely bounce the helpless infant into the ambulance.) Before Windows, I used variations of graphical user interfaces, the more rudimentary being Norton Commander. Before this, I navigated the DOS prompt. C:/ The cursor pulsed on some forgotten screen from a computer in my windowless head for 25 years.

Paired with my nostalgic ramblings in the Civ world, I made the mistake of getting on Reddit. It began innocently enough. I searched for stories of PhD dropouts, looking for those who were formerly in the Humanities.

Not that I wasn’t aware of all of the former PhD candidates, and even graduates, without jobs at universities. It's something of a past-time in English departments to talk about the dire job situation. I've heard various statistics and even more anecdotes. Apocryphal or not, they still leave an impression. There is one tenure-track job for every 100 qualified applicants. I’d heard of a committee to hire an English professor. Their three finalists were nearly identical in performance and qualifications. The subtext is they simply hired the most likable of the finalists. During the first hiring season after COVID-19 disrupted the world, I heard that there were a quarter of regular job postings — one opening for every 400 qualified candidates. However, reading on Reddit about the world beyond academics offered affirmations to my own doubts.

I began thinking creatively about career opportunities in the U.S. I was tired of the conjecture about my poor job prospects. After 7 years teaching in various colleges and universities across the country, I finally was honest with myself and determined that I never fully enjoyed teaching. Although I love leading a lively discussion, scrawling rapidly on a white board, most of the other elements, especially the grading and lecturing, caused me great anxiety. On the Reddit board, I noticed a few former academics mention success after going through coding bootcamps.