Hello,
My name is:
Camila Arce
Available
to
work
to
work
Hello,
Hi, I’m Camila and this is my story. I studied biochemistry in Chile and wrote my thesis in the Department of Cell Biology, researching how heavy alcohol consumption affects adolescence. After finishing university, I chased one of my big dreams: living abroad. I first went to Ireland to improve my English, then moved to Germany, where I enrolled in a master’s program in biochemistry at the University of Cologne. A difficult experience during an internship triggered an anxiety crisis that made me rethink my priorities. Together with my husband, we decided to move to France, a country that offered new opportunities, a friendlier language, and plenty of sunshine and beaches.
In France I faced the typical challenges of a new life: cultural adaptation, job hunting, and the language barrier. After several months without finding a position in my highly specialized field, I had two options: specialize in another area to stay in science, or start something completely new. And here I am—you can guess which path I chose.
It’s been a lot of fun, but also quite challenging for me. I’ve learned so much, rewiring my brain to grasp new concepts and think differently. In science and programming, there’s lots of knowledge we can transfer, yet there’s also plenty of new material to integrate. Truly the best of both worlds.
A few years ago I discovered a game for learning programming: CodeCombat. I started playing for fun and learned a lot. Then I decided to take some courses to dive deeper. The first ones were on Laracasts. I watched videos on HTML, CSS, and PHP. Jeffrey Way explains things very well; everything looks simple, and I was behind the screen trying to figure out why it didn’t work for me (spoiler alert: sometimes it was just a typo).
Later I discovered Grafikart, which was great for me because I could practice my French (at least understand it) while continuing to learn. I revisited HTML and CSS and kept going with JavaScript.
Deciding to go back to school (officially) was tough, but I wanted to formalize the knowledge I already had and keep learning more about web development. So I enrolled in a career‑change program at OpenClassrooms. Now I can say I am officially a web developer. ¡Hoorray!
After finishing my training I devoted myself to motherhood and personal projects that keep me up‑to‑date (or at least prevent my skills from rusting). Currently I’m learning more about React through the Epic React course.
