Developer, Mentor, Imagineer… CREATOR!
My name is Wade Sellers. At writing this, I am 31 years old and a professional iPhone app developer that has been a mentor for high school teachers and students for the last 2 and 1/2 years. This was not the case always however. My life adventure has been 1 of confusion mixed with desperate attempts to find happiness while thinking I had to follow a path that I thought would make my family proud. In my early 20’s is when I realized I was lost. Lazily wofting slowly through college pursuing a nursing degree I wasn’t interested in, I eventually stopped going to class. I stopped moving forward without an idea of what was next. This uncertainty of a clear path led me to the military.
I had discovered purpose and respect. The military propelled me into the FBI, which opened up an opportunity working for a defense contractor on surveillance planes in Afghanistan. I had my path and it came with a sizable paycheck doing a job in a place I did not want to be and in a war I did not believe in. It took a mortar hitting the airway near where I was working for me to decide to leave. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay any mind to think about my next step and I was lost once again. In a moment of desperation, I confessed my feeling of emptiness to a coworker. She asked me the question we are all asked by someone in our lives…
“Wade, What is it you want to do?”
This time with no reason to have my guard up, I said what exactly was in my mind. I replied…
“I want to make iPhone apps and I want someone to pay me for it!”
This may seem like a small event but it was the 1st time in my life, I expressed a personal passion out loud without worrying about what anyone thought about it 1st. It was genuine and it was all my idea. It seems luck was on my side that night. My coworker had a passion for design and knew about bootcamp style schooling for her interests so she asked me…
“Do you know if there are any bootcamps for iPhone app development?”
I never thought about that. In my head, coding as a profession required a Computer Science degree and I had no interest in pursuing another degree. I didn’t want to go back to college for years. I went to my computer and Googled, “iPhone app bootcamps” and was surprised to see there were several options. I didn’t sleep that night. I read every page, every bootcamp company website, every review on all of these schools and landed on Mobile Makers Academy, an 8-week bootcamp in Chicago. I applied immediately and was interviewed a few days later while I was still in Afghanistan with the cofounder, Brandon Passley. I must’ve wowed him because I was accepted days later and was on my way to pursuing my personal passion for the 1st time in my life.
I had no clue what I was getting into but I knew I needed to know what this was like. I paid the money and told myself, “Wade, you are going to give this everything you have and you will find out if you love it or you hate it by the time the 8-week bootcamp is through.
I found out that I loved it and haven’t looked back since!
The people who taught and managed the school saw my energy and transformation. They asked me to volunteer and mentor new students coming into the bootcamp just like me. I saw that I could do this while holding a full-time career as a app developer. Without hesitation I accepted with a smile on my face. I didn’t know then that this was going to open up becoming a new passion within myself. After a few bootcamps, I was then invited to work contracturally for Mobile Makers as a mentor to teachers who were coming into their high school program. We were teaching teachers how to code over the summer and then giving them cirriculum and app projects to take back to their schools to teach high school kids how to make iPhone apps in class.
I found the most immense excitement and feeling of purpose by talking to teachers and students about coding apps. There is something about showing my passion for art in the form of code to others. My enthusiam is contagious and I find that the teachers and students I interact with inhale that passion for this industry and see the endless possibilities for how they can create things with code that others will use and enjoy.
I am going to leave you here with this… It took nearly 3 decades to find my passion and that is why I am a unique coder and why I am a fantastic mentor. I pull in my life experiences and lessons learned on my path into my passion for code and with a realistic view of the world mixed with my understanding that we can use our imaginations to make awesome things that people need and enjoy. I hope you will find this inspirational and as a form of validation that you too, can build a happy and purposeful career by pursuing the things you find enjoyable as well.
