At the time, I was a college dropout. My job history looked like: self-employed, Starbucks, and a bunch of catering per diem gigs. I didn't know what a "software engineer" did, although I had a vague desire to make video games (but no idea how).

I was technical enough to install WordPress with Cpanel and resell hosting to mom/pop businesses, but I couldn't really code beyond copy/pasting PHP snippets.

The Intro to Computer Science series on MITx changed everything. I remember finishing a homework assignment (hangman game), then immediately looking for more things to code, even though the assignment took me 8+ hours.

I was hooked! Within a few months, I landed a gig at a video game studio ($15/hour dream job). My job was a mix of QA, systems admin, gameplay design, and tools programming.

A few years after that, I shook Ned Batchelder's hand after his Pycon 2015 talk. I was a software engineer at Red Hat by then, but still feeling like I'd snuck in through the back door. Knowing that I'd aced MIT coursework helped me push down my insecurities, even years later.

By my early 30s, I was millionaire - thanks entirely to my software engineering career. I quit my day job last year to take another swing at entrepreneurship, and it blows my mind to compare then/now.

Thanks to everyone who made MITx and Edx.org. Y'all changed my life!