Alex, a rising eight grader at Explo at Wellesley, finds his calling in coding — both writing it and teaching it. Already a mentor for a coding nonprofit, he's glad to be treated like an adult and make his own social decisions.
I want to be a programmer of some sort when I grow up. I participate and volunteer for a nonprofit website called CoderDojo, where I'm a mentor for people younger than me and my age — and some older than me, probably — and help them learn how to write and use code. I started learning how to code when I was eleven, and it was just a couple years later that I started to do Dojo. I've always liked computers, and learning to make them do exactly what I wanted them to do seemed like a logical thing to learn.
One thing I like about Explo is that they don't force you to be with people. Don't get me wrong, I like being around people, I like socializing, but I don't feel like it's a requirement here — instead, everyone here wants to do it. There's nobody telling you to do it, but you do it anyway. It's like real life.
Liam Brooks