Volunteering with CodePath - Help Students Launch Their Careers in Tech!

Oh my gosh. Okay. Volunteering with CodePath has truly truly impacted my personal and professional growth.

For one, CodePath changed my life. Hi everyone, I’m Michelle Coup. I’m a senior software engineer at Workday.

My name is Pazia. I am a software engineer at GoDaddy here in the Bay Area. Being a a coach for the TIP 101 course over the summer involved me helping students with solving problems and explaining more concepts with them virtually, but also helping them practice for interviews.

One of the favorite things I thought about the program was how organized it was. Like every week they had the exact plan of what I should ask them, the questions we should go over. So, it was very low commitment.

I could just really review the questions like before the course and then it was just meeting with the students and helping them out. And most of the time the students were able to figure out on their own. You’re really there to just like help them and guide them through the questions.

I remember being a college student and how difficult the interviews were just to even get an internship. How important is to come prepared. Like I didn’t know I was supposed to be that prepared for my interviews.

I was like, "Oh, this is an internship. I wonder how how bad it could be." And I think it’s so important that we help these students so that they can get these jobs because internships really are the core point of their careers. I really loved the tip program because one, it helped me like brush up on my skills as well and also give back to the community.

So, I got to meet so many different students, learn their passion, learn their goals and where they wanted to go. When the last course that I was a coach for was ending last summer, some of the students had come up to me and told me how impactful it was for giving them the confidence to go on and be software engineers. And it was really cool to see that because I know that for me my coaches when I was a CodePath student were very very monumental for me to have the confidence to know that I could also be a software engineer.

So it was really cool to have that full circle moment. At Copath we have always believed deeply in personalized education and one of the most critical components is to make sure that you are connecting on a human level an emotional level with students and that’s where volunteers come in. People should get involved as volunteers with CodePath because CodePath is doing a very important job of providing the practical aspect of succeeding in the job as software engineers.

I couldn’t have had my job that I have now without codep for for the job and on the job as well. And then for professional growth, it’s always very nice to be able to have a chance to practice things that are still relevant for me in my workplace with these students. And it also stretches a different part of my brain, too, because I’m teaching it to them.

I just think the CodePath program is great. It’s super organized. It’s very easy to volunteer for, and I think you get to meet so many wonderful people through the program, and you learn, too.

CodePath changed my life. So I think that you should volunteer with CodePath so that it can change your life too and you can change other students lives.