June 26, 2025
version 4.0
When I first started learning to code last summer, a friend suggested I build a portfolio site.
“It’s a good way to get started with frontend,” he said.
At the time, I remember thinking: “How can I build a portfolio if I don’t have anything to put in it?” Since then, I’ve gone through 4 versions of this site within the span of a year.
And now, this.
Some elements stayed throughout, like the flipping cards in the coursework section and my favorite color red, but most of it changed.
This one has a cool blog, and it focuses more on the kind of work I want to do. It’s not the most polished or universal design, but every detail means something.
***
I’m rarely satisfied with things I make for myself, especially design and even more so with writing.
When I’m working on a project for someone else, I have a purpose, a structure, and a set of needs to meet. But when it’s just for me, I want the thing to reflect how I think and what I care about, in the most true form it can take right now.
No portfolio or paragraph can fully represent a whole person, but I still find myself trying to get close.
Some versions leaned into creativity, while others tried to show the kind of clarity that comes out when I’m working in a team.
When junior year recruiting became real, I started thinking more deliberately about how I want to come across. I thought about where I’ve worked, where I’d do my best work, and who I’d want to work with.
I reached out to people across creative tech, graphics engineering, interaction design, etc. who work in the fuzzy territory between systems and human thought. Those conversations were the best things I did this year. But because a job search moves faster than conversations, I wanted to recreate those moments of resonance through an accessible medium.
I stopped thinking of this as an archive or a pitch and rather as a signal: something that might show what I am through my work and thoughts.
***
That led to this version. It’s not finished; there’s a lot I haven’t updated yet… The experience section is still the same, and one of the blog posts aren’t written.
But weirdly, that’s why I can consistently work on it. The beauty of my site is that it’s never really done and must be deployed at some point. I also am not a polished engineer, but must show up at some point (hi). This site grows with me, in a sense.
Looking back, I’m not sure if my friend meant that when he told me to build a portfolio.
But it turned out to be the perfect first project anyway because it started from somewhere and kept evolving.
And because it gave me a place to figure things out in motion without needing to have it all figured out.