January 1986 to June 1988
I had attended DTCC in 1977/78 but only completed one year. As it was mainframe, punch cards, COBOL and Fortran, I was lost after a year and didn’t go back again until I decided to go back for Food Service Management in 1985. While taking food service courses, I was taking a course in the Basic language, that I had experience with as a hobbyist. The professor teaching the course mentioned to me that I had a talent for programming. Twenty minutes later a switch went off in my brain and I had a sudden clear revelation of what I wanted to do with my life. I had been contemplating this for months since I had left my chef position at the Greenery Too. I wanted to be a software developer. I asked the counselors to change my major. They discouraged me but said they would give me one chance. I got tutored to “catch up” but by mid-semester I was doing the tutoring.
The courses for Data Processing were Basic, COBOL, Assembler, Systems Analysis and other data processing courses. Also, there was accounting, English courses, mathematics courses and others.
At DTCC I also tutored accounting and programming and worked as a “lab tech”. At the time I was also working in restaurants.