I was never the kid who dreamed of writing code.
I was the kid at the keyboard late at night, teaching myself songs by ear, lost in it. No formal lessons, no classical training — just me figuring it out one chord at a time.
I still am that kid, actually. These days I play piano at church and serve as the music director. Music never left — it just stopped being the only thing.
So how did I end up a full-stack developer and CS student? Honestly — one class I can barely remember signing up for, a professor who refused to let me settle, and a slow realization that I didn't have to choose.
Music Was More Than a Hobby
People sometimes assume that because I didn't pursue music professionally, it was just a phase. It wasn't.
Music was how I communicated. Not in a metaphorical, romanticized way — in a real, practical one. There were things I couldn't put into words that I could work through at a piano. Moods, tensions, ideas that hadn't fully formed yet. Playing was how I processed the world. It was part of my identity in a way that went deeper than "I enjoy this."
Being self-taught mattered too. I didn't learn music the way schools teach it — theory first, sheet music, scales in isolation. I learned it backwards, by feel. I'd hear something, want to understand it, and pull it apart until I could recreate it. That instinct — hear something interesting, figure out how it works, make it yours — would show up again later in ways I didn't expect.
When senior year came around, music was still the plan. I had a picture of what that future looked like — studying music, maybe becoming a teacher, passing on what I'd taught myself to someone else. There was something appealing about that full circle: self-taught kid figures it out, then helps the next one do the same.
And then I hit a wall: auditions.
Every program wanted classical training. Formal repertoire. The kind of foundation you build over years of structured lessons. I didn't have that. I had real passion and real hours, but I hadn't come through the right channel. It felt like a door that was technically open but not built for someone like me — not because I wasn't good at music, but because the system wasn't designed to evaluate what I actually had.
I wasn't bitter. But I had to accept that the path I'd imagined wasn't going to look the way I'd imagined it.
The Class I Almost Don't Remember Taking
Somewhere in high school — a friend mentioned it, or maybe my counselor, I genuinely can't remember — I ended up in a CS class.
It wasn't a dramatic decision. It was just the next thing on the schedule.
But something clicked in a way I didn't anticipate. Not immediately, not in a life-changing-moment kind of way. More like: this is interesting. I want to keep pulling on this thread.
The project that sticks with me most from that class: we built something that used camera recognition to control the Google dinosaur game with your hand. No keyboard, no mouse — just your hand in front of a webcam, and the little dinosaur jumping on command.
It sounds simple now. But at the time, the fact that I had made that happen — that I'd written the logic that connected a camera feed to a game response — felt genuinely wild. It was the first time I understood that code wasn't just solving textbook problems. It was building things that did things in the real world.
I didn't walk out of that class thinking this is my calling. I walked out thinking that was really cool. What else can I make?
College, a Near-Quit, and Dr. Zaki
When it came time to pick a major, I chose CS. Not out of passion, not out of certainty — more like: music school isn't the right fit, I liked that class, let's see where this goes.
Freshman year was an adjustment. I was figuring out if this was actually my thing, or just the path of least resistance I'd stumbled into. For a while, I wasn't sure.
Second semester, I had Dr. Zaki.
I don't know how to overstate how much that mattered. She wasn't just a professor — she became a mentor. She pushed me in the way that only someone who actually believes in you can. When I wanted to take the easy way out, she didn't let me. When I was ready to quit, she saw something in me that I wasn't seeing in myself yet and held me to a higher standard because of it.
There's a specific kind of impact a person like that has — not just on your grade or your semester, but on the story you tell yourself about what you're capable of. Before Dr. Zaki, CS was something I was trying. After, it was something I was committed to.
I started building things. Small projects at first, then bigger ones. I started seeing how much you could actually create with code — not just solve problems in the abstract, but build real products that people interact with.
It started to feel the way music used to feel.
The self-taught instinct I'd built at the piano translated directly. The pattern recognition — hearing a song and pulling apart how it worked, how the pieces related to each other — showed up again in how I approached systems and code. It wasn't a completely different world. It was a different instrument.
What I've Taken From It
The most honest version of this story is: I didn't know CS was my thing until I was already deep in it. And I think that's okay.
I'm a self-taught kid who loved music, hit a wall, wandered into a class he barely remembers signing up for, almost quit, and then met someone who believed in him before he believed in himself.
And here's the part I want to be clear about: I never gave up the first thing to find the second one. Music is still a massive part of my life. I play piano every week at church. I serve as the music director. That identity didn't go anywhere — it just made room for something new alongside it.
I think that's actually the real lesson here. The audition wall felt like a door closing. It wasn't. It was just a redirect. The self-taught instinct, the way I hear patterns and pull them apart to understand them — that's as alive in how I write code as it ever was at the piano. I didn't leave music behind. I brought it with me.
If you came to tech through an unexpected door — or if you're still standing outside it, not sure if it's for you — that's a valid way to get here. Not everyone has a dramatic origin story. Sometimes it's a dinosaur game and a professor who wouldn't let you settle.
And sometimes the thing you thought you were leaving is still exactly where you left it, waiting for Sunday morning.