There have been only two times in my life that I’ve kept a consistent blog. The first was my study abroad experience in China. The second was my time at Makersquare. (Makersquare was acquired by Hack Reactor, which is now a project of Galvanize. Lol, startups.)
At some point I decided to make all my bootcamp posts privately published (on my old WordPress blog). Yesterday, I decided to port them over and re-publish them. It’s now been three years, but if anyone is currently going through a bootcamp, or considering it, I hope that perhaps they find it helpful.
Weekly bootcamp posts
- The Road So Far (2016-01-10)
- Week 1: Lots (2016-01-10)
- Week 2: Blur (2016-01-17)
- Week 3: Enter APIs (2016-01-24)
- Week 4: Mental Fog (2016-02-01)
- Week 5: Onto Projects (2016-02-07)
- Week 6: Halfway Through (2016-02-14)
- Week 7: Projectland (2016-02-29)
- Week 8: Back to Back-End (2016-03-07)
- Week 9: Thesis, cont'd (2016-03-16)
- Week 10: Is This Real Life? (2016-03-21)
- Week 11: Thesis, Concluded (2016-03-28)
- Week 12: The Transition (2016-04-02)
Was it worth it?
Short answer, yes.
I had been trying to break into full-time web development for years, and at the time, I still didn’t feel I’d done it.
I needed a complete change of pace, and a completely focused time period to focus on the pivot. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to do so. I f’n love what Lambda School is doing to make this pivot more accessible to a wider range of people. (Enjoyed this Founder’s talk podcast episode feat. founder Austin Allred recently). Note: I have no experience with Lambda. My intention is to highlight the issue of access. See also: freeCodeCamp.
I took a chance on a bootcamp because:
- I had been scratching at the door and doing the work for a long time, I already knew it was something I enjoyed.
- Despite the fact that bootcamps were pretty much a new thing, and unregulated, I felt it conferred some greater level of validation, and gave me a better shot. (They’re not so new anymore, I feel like I was at the tail-end of that).
- I needed to invest in a hard pivot. Working my way gradually wasn’t working.
I’m so grateful to be where I am now, and it’s absolutely mind-blowing that the bootcamp was three years ago. Also, none of this would be possible without these folks.
Top comments (1)
Thank you for sharing your story week by week. I really enjoyed it, especially your thoughts on pair programming, D3 and data visualisation.