I started Flatiron School when I realized I wanted to change careers and could incorporate my passion of computers into a career.
I started Flatiron in Sept. 14, 2019 and had the following goals:
- Learn two new computer languages.
- Create a working useful and fun project within a few weeks
- Finish the whole program in less than 4 months.
Choosing the self-paced program proved to be the best options for me as I completed the program (coding portions and projects) on January 12, 2020. Two days shy of what I initially set as a goal. Looking at my github commit history, I had 15 days of which I did not do any coding. On top of my current career, I committed a lot of extended hours into the program because I really wanted to prove to myself that this is really what I wanted to do, and that it could be done. Of course it did not come without any drawbacks. There was a lot of sacrifices I made a long the way. Over the last four months, I commited over 35+ hours a week on top of working a full time role. Some weeks were easier, some were insanely difficult. However, with the support of my wife and her commitment to me, I was able to enjoy the holidays, our marriage isn’t totally ruined, in fact it’s been stronger than ever (haha!), and I was still able to crush all the goals I set.
One of the biggest temptations I came accross during the course of the program was passing a lab without fully understanding and moving on. It was especially easy when it was at 1am and I am so close to finishing a lab, there was always a voice inside telling me “relax, and move on to the next one, you’ve done enough”. I am so glad I didn’t because I can confidently say that I completed each and every lab completely and faithfully (there were some test I had to rewrite, but that’s a topic all on its own!). This really set the tone for me of perservering, never giving up and pushing myself to crush the next challenge. It became really evident towards the end of the program, that I was in a really good flow of things and I was learning faster and faster. It was as if a switch had been flipped and all of a sudden, all those previous issues I faced earlier in the program, were now helping me solve the next one.
I also found coding without a keyboard really helps. I have a notebook I kept for the whole program, and I would say I did my best programming without ever typing anything. I drew lots of diagrams, printed lots of code from the examples and pasted them on my notebook and started highliting and writing notes, arrows, questions… you name it! This really help me look at the code without mindlessly pressing learn test, it help me understand little tricks and and tips when I was coding my own projects. It help keep the comments on my code to a minimum. Once I was back typing my code, I had a pretty good idea on how to structure most of code.
I am very proud of the grit I’ve shoed in the last few months. My biggest goals lie ahead of me, and I plan on continuing the work I put into the program. My main objective is to start a career in full-stack web development, implementing what I’ve learned in my previous career as a scientist to come up with creative and systematic solutions to the day to day people problems. I know, from this point forward the future is bright!
Overall I am very excited where I can carry these lessons in the future.