August 2022 Student of the Month: Mariah Jemmings

What happens when it's time to go into delivery but the final project for your coding bootcamp is due soon? A different level of dedication is born.

Due to a lack of confidence in high school, Mariah Jemmings did not consider herself to be very smart. However, when she started exploring STEM subjects in college, she realized that was not the case. In fact, she performed very well in these topics. Initially, Mariah wanted to enter the medical field as a doctor, but upon starting a family, decided that 100-hour work weeks would not be conducive to her goals at home. She was eager, however, to find something that would present similar challenges and keep her mind busy solving problems and complex puzzles.

One day, she saw something about software engineering on social media that piqued her interest. After doing some research, she found that software engineering was exactly what she was looking for. She relished the idea that, with coding, she could “solve problems and build things bigger than [she] could imagine; bigger than [her]self. Something the whole world could use. The possibilities were endless with software development.” She started a degree program at a local university, and while she enjoyed the coding courses, felt they were moving a little slower than she’d like. “I was looking at job postings and saw many of them mention coding bootcamps. In fact, some even preferred coding bootcamp experience”, said Mariah. She decided that a bootcamp was exactly what she was looking for to accelerate her learning and gain hands on skills to join the industry. She found the coding bootcamps offered through the College of Southern Nevada (CSN), took the pre-assessment, scored 12/12, and took the leap leading her to enroll in the 18-week program.

Mariah started CSN’s bootcamp in February, 2022. She was expecting it to be hard work, but that was not the only thing she expecting in the months to follow. The previous October, Mariah learned she was pregnant with her second child. “I didn’t want anyone to think I couldn’t do it because I was pregnant, so I was super secretive about it. However, two weeks before my due date, my pregnancy was getting tougher and I had to be on bed rest. So, I had to tell my instructor,” Mariah recalled. This was all around the time she would be starting her final, most demanding development project for the bootcamp. However, despite preparing for a new addition to the family, Mariah was staying on top of her assignments until the time to finish up her final project collided with her time to go into labor. “I was messaging my mentor, Lisa, while I was in labor saying ‘my mom is bringing my computer, so I’ll be able to work on the error I currently have in my project code’.”

Mariah welcomed her beautiful baby boy into the world as any loving mother would and when he fell asleep in the hospital, she pulled out her laptop and began plugging away at her final project. “It wasn’t even frustrated about the error I was trying to fix because anytime I get a major error, I would work on it for hours, I couldn’t sleep. But when it’s finally fixed, it’s euphoric.” And that fix did come the following morning when she was able to submit her final project.

After graduating, Mariah was recruited for a role that combined some of her previous skills in accounting with her newly found software development skills and accepted to job. Mariah continues to be an advocate for learning to code and has even referred some of her friends to CSN’s bootcamp programs. When asked what she liked about the program and what she thought could be improved, she said “The bootcamp was more challenging than I thought, but it was not impossible. It stretched me and helped me to grow. I really have nothing bad to say at all. Everything was very organized and I always had a resource available when I needed help. My instructor and mentor always got back to me right away. I got a lot of info and retained it because of the way it was taught. I'm so thankful to have been given the opportunity to complete this program through Promineo and CSN!”