Week Three: Ben Huggins, United States

“I’m 28, live and grew up in the Midwest, and have been playing video games all my life. I enjoy hiking, camping, rock climbing, and being on the river as much as I can manage. One of the best things I’ve ever done was visit Europe for about 5 weeks on a solo trip–an experience I deeply want to recreate someday. I play several instruments, but my main study is of saxophone. I went to college originally for a degree in music composition but changed partway through to get a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and made the music degree my minor.

Ever since graduating last year during covid, I’ve yet to have luck finding a good data/software type job that will allow me to just get my foot in the door in that industry, but that is definitely where I want to be heading. I currently work at a restaurant as a server. The money is a very significant windfall to me. In my life I’ve never really had money, so this prize represents paying off almost all of my non-student-loan debts and car. Without that stress I think I might be able to join a coding bootcamp and finally get a first start into software engineering.”