CLAY VANDER KOLK

Aloha and thank you for checking out my website. My name is Clay Vander Kolk and I am a web developer from Hawaii. Before I explain more of my backgorund, I would love to give you more insight into who I am and what I'm passionate about!

I am 23 years old and I love all sports (especialy soccer, surfing, climbing) and even played 4 years of collegiate soccer. I'm always down to go for a hike, adventure outside, or go for a run! I also love music - listening to it, playing it on the guitar, and singing it with my amazing wife! I also love people and I love collaborating, building relationships, and being well connected. I love working and being around kids but I also have always connected well with people my age as well as older people. I think we can learn a multitidue from people of every age and stage of life, and I try to surround myself with diverse people to make the most of that. My brain works very mathematically, which is what brought me into the field of mathematics originally. I love problem solving and can easily find myself hyperfocused for hours to compelete a probem. On the flip side of that, I also have really developed a passion for creating art. I got into film cameras a while ago and since then, I have joined my wife's photogprahy business to shoot super8 film on the side. I also have a drone and we share a camera so that I can maximize my content creating. I get so much satisfaction from shooting videos and then editing and collecting them all into a final video that I am proud of. That being said, check out one of my all time favorite artist at the bottom of this page and check out the next section about my background!

Rewind almost 6 years ago, I was entering into college for engineering. I started a robotics team at my highschool because I loved creating things with my hands, as well as writing code and watching it translate to running functional robots. However, about a year into college, I found myself loving 2 main aspects of engineering: the code and the math. At that point I went through some significant life changes including the loss of my father. I decided I wanted to continue his legacy teacing and I could do that as a math educator. I then went on to graduate with a math education degree, while also taking an occasional coding class on the side. While I loved the teaching job I had, I found myself itching to be challenged more as well as learn more about coding and how I could potentially even do it on the side. From that point on, I decided to pursue software developement and began dedicating my weekends, and free time to learn code. After my teaching job ended, my wife and I moved out to Hawaii to experience the culture that my parents lived in before I was born. Since then I have continued to build a portfolio, take classes, and learn new languages and tools. I find myself struggling to put the computer away sometimes because I love coding and developing and I am so excited to be officially looking for a job. I am looking for Full Stack Web Developement but as I grow as a developer I look forward to seeing how I can maximize my artistic side but even more so, my mathematical, problem solving side. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me via my contact page or stick around for one last section where I will go through the different programs, languages, and tools I've learned and worked with over the last 8 months.

My web developement education process began with working through The Odin Project and their intro to web developement free course. I learned HTML, CSS, JS, as well as command line languages. I then went through Harvard's CS50 class in which I learned some basics of C, Python, SQL, and again HTML, CSS, and JS. In college I took a computer science class that was intended for CS majors. In the class I learned Python and ended up building a checkers app as well as a computer opponent, which I never ended up beating! I had also done some coding with C++ and Arduino in highschool and early college. I have then spent the last couple of months going through Colt Steele's Udemy Web Developer Bootcamp. I was able to master my skill sin HTML and CSS and then dive deep into Vanilla JS. We then learned back end programming and I was able to use tools like Node.js, React, Express, MongoDB, and much more! Check out the table for a list of all major ideas I developed over the course of this bootcamp! After completing my final project for the bootcamp, I have since taken courses in MySQL and TypeScript. While I have spent a good amount of time learning each of these topics, I think what advantages me more than any of the things I've learned is that I love the learning process and I strive to continue to grow as a developer. I want to grow into an experienced developer and grow into leadership rolls in which I can take on more repsonsibility and still continue to learn new languages, frameworks, and programs.