I am now done with Flatiron’s bootcamp and I am very excited, but also extremely motivated to keep going. These past 6 months have been filled with a lot of late nights and stressful days. They’ve been filled wtih a lot of exciting moments after finally figuring out a problem after hours of looking at the screen. They’ve been filled with a lot of zoom calls that lead us (students) to not only help each other, but also maybe making a friend or two. I dont think I ever paid more attention to the “bootcamp” part of the name of this program more than I have in the last few days reminiscing on my experience here. The program was packed with a lot of material and experience in a very short period of time, and now I know what it taught me and what it means for me moving forward.
I am extremely happy to finally be done with such a vigorous program, and to have come up on top because it wasn’t easy. It took me time to figure out how to properly plan for the amount of time I would spend in front of the computer, but also how to try to be more efficient with that time. I realized I was able to focus better at nigh therefore getting much more done. By doing so I was able to find a very part time job in the morning and do school starting after lunch into the night. I struggled with the amount of structured material being thrown at us in such a short period of time which lead me to realize that projects were a great time to let it all come together. The labs were great, but the projects allowed me to make my own errors and debug them. That allowed me to recall a bunch of information that I’d learned, and become proficient in reading documentation. Learing what to google for and what to read are skills that I now know are great tools that will help me tremendously moving forward. I feel extremely fortunate to not only have extremely knowledgeble instructors, but also ones that were always willing to help. Having that said, I think I learned how to teach myself.
That leads me to my motivation after finishing the program. As much as I have learned these past several months, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much more to learn about the languages and frameworks we’ve learned to master them, and there’s also more languages out there that I will need to learn for a variety of reasons. There are still a number of subjects that we didnt touch on that I learned about doing my projects that I would love to dive deeper on. I feel prepared to take all of that on. Not only that, but I feel that I’ve gained a access to a great community and network of great developers. Wether it was though part of the curriculum, or part of struggles, this experience has given me a good start for the develper I will be.