I have work experience using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, AngularJS, NodeJS, PHP, Laravel, WordPress, Magento. Shopify, Ruby on Rails, Python, Linux, Ubuntu Server 14.04, and I have the Certified System Administrator certification from the Linux Foundation. As far as software goes, I'm proficient in git, GIMP, and vim. All of my learning so far has been from self-study, so I am very independent and self-motivated; little to no direction isn’t a problem for me. I’m also a very quick learner and I’m detail-oriented. I tend to stay up late at night working and wake up early the next day to continue working when I have a big project. I love Open Source software, and I use Arch Linux as my primary operating system. I have made a few minor contributions to open source software, as seen on my GitHub profile.
When I was 16 years old I decided to go on a foreign exchange trip, and I wanted to go to Europe. I wasn’t too particular about where exactly though and I ended up going to Finland. Finnish is a very difficult language to learn and the people there are more reserved than most Americans. Add to that mix a nearly 6 month winter with temperatures as low as -24 F (-31 C) and you can see how this was quite a life-changing experience. I left Finland fluent in Spanish and conversational in Finnish. The Finns were rather shy, at least with me, so I spent most of my time with Latin American exchange students and actually met my current fiancée there. When I returned to the US, I finished my last year of high school and then moved to Mexico, precisely for my fiancée, who was only my girlfriend at the time. When I got to Mexico, I had a couple thousand dollars saved up, I had no visas or permissions to work, but I at least spoke Spanish. Within 2 weeks of being there I was able to find work teaching English, and I later found a better teaching position and got my visa situation taken care of. Prior to teaching I had only gained experience in sales and retail, so teaching was a completely new experience for me. It wasn’t my favorite thing to do, however, so I decided that I needed to get some more education in order to get into a field that I actually would enjoy. I began to teach myself HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and Python in my free time since I’ve always been a tech junkie. At 20 years old, I began my first job in web development, only 4 months after I began studying programming. In the 6 months that I've been there, I've learned PHP, Laravel, WordPress, some Magento, some Ruby on Rails, and Shopify development. I am also conversational in German, since German is a pretty popular language around the tech world from what I’ve seen. I’m currently 21 years old, I speak English, Spanish, Finnish, and German, and can code in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby and Python, am a certified Linux System Administrator, and I’d like to think that I’ve overcome more difficulties and had more life experiences than most people twice my age have.