Coding Bootcamp: The First Two Weeks
I began the Software Engineering Bootcamp at the Flatiron School on May 11, 2020. Living through a pandemic, I felt that the few months I have spent under quarantine in New York City would be best spent learning a new skill that would serve me when the pandemic subsides. Although I’d never dabbled in code before, my friends and family urged me to take on the challenge. After completing both General Assembly’s and Flatiron School’s Bootcamp Prep courses, both of which are available free on the respective school’s website, I felt I was ready to begin interviewing.
Truthfully, I felt Flatiron School’s Free Online Bootcamp Prep was much more rigorous and dived deeper into more complicated topics. It was for this reason I decided to interview for Flatiron School first. Over the month I’d spent prepping for my technical interviews, I could tell that Flatiron School offered a teaching style that best supported my individual learning style. The technical interview could be taken in either Ruby or JavaScript, and I chose the latter. My nerves leading up to the day were on high, but the technical interview went smoothly, and within a week I had heard that I had been accepted!
As I write this post at the beginning of my third week, let me make something clear: coding bootcamps are not for the faint of heart. The program is more rigorous than both my specialized high school and liberal arts college education. Never before have I had to wake up before class just to get in a few more hours of studying, or work well into the late hours of the evening trying to get a project to work. But the experience has also been one of the most rewarding. Only a few weeks in, and I can clearly see that software engineering is the engaging career path I have been waiting for.
One thing I particularly love about the Flatiron School—there are no grades! Yes, there is such a thing as “failing,” but “passing” is entirely what you make of it. At the end of the day, if you haven’t learned the material, it is you who suffers—no one else. You are just less prepared than you would have been otherwise for your career in the coding world. I feel that this approach to learning has taken a great weight off my shoulders. Throughout my previous educational experiences, I have always been working towards the “A” that would appear on my transcript at the end of the semester. However, I feel that without grades I am actually more motivated and eager to absorb the material in a way that feels natural to me.
I can also see that this has had a similar effect on the other students in my cohort. Never before have I been in a classroom with absolutely everyone looking to make the most of their time there. Usually, there is at least one person who is slacking off. But Flatiron School picks its students to find the most motivated—and it shows. Working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than in a classroom as it would have been normally, has definitely been challenging. Sometimes it’s more difficult to get your idea across when you’re speaking over a screenshare, but since we’re all in this together, the support of my peers and amazing instructors has most definitely made the experience top notch!
