The plunge into Makers Academy + Personal Goals
As I was going through Flatiron’s Learn.co coding program while rekindling the flame with coding, I was thoroughly impressed by how they outlined it and how even though it feels like you didn’t take in much information, the reality is that its hands on approach which got you working with code and making it work whilst only giving you a gentle nudge in the right direction was very satisfying. I’d seriously considered enrolling into their online program but their career assistance was only guaranteed if you were an American citizen - which unfortunately, I’m not. Though its program and its on-site program are critically acclaimed, personally, it had less value if they were taking that into account for the tuition they were charging.
This got me looking into other bootcamps all based within Europe, and eventually I settled for taking the plunge and going with Makers Academy based in London. They weren’t actually my first choice initially, but I wanted to make sure I did my due diligence - reading blogs of alumni/current students from various bootcamps, past reviews (especially the negative ones) and what they were coming out of those camps making.
After taking into account all of the information I had on hand, I decided it’s now or never - continue living my comfortable but hilariously boring life or spruce it up a little with a bit of adventure? That phrase rung again in my head: “YOU COULD DIE AT ANY FUCKING SECOND”... so I booked myself to take the application test for about a week and a half after I hit the apply button. Shortly after, I was given a pretty thorough outline about what the course was about, the application process and what I’d need to do to ensure I’d do well enough to pass.
Off to Ruby on codeacademy and Chris Pine’s Learn to Program I went. Some nights I’d get only 10-20 minutes done, other nights a couple of hours - but the importance was consistency and making sure at least something every day was done - thankfully a habit I retained while studying languages. The last three nights before the test, I made the awful mistake of buying Stardew Valley and sinking far too many hours into it - but I made sure to do a short refresher of everything I’d done before and then awaited my call for the interview on the day I booked it for.
After a few teething issues with Skype and having to get set up with ScreenHero instead, on went the application process. As we ran a couple of minutes late, we had a brief chat, then played a quick logic game before going straight on into the coding. Out of respect for Makers, I won’t reveal anything but if you go over the material they tell you to (and I mean actually do it and not just skim over it a night or two before) and have a decent stab at some basic Ruby code yourself, you’ll be totally fine. Get used to explaining your thought process - something I thankfully had inadvertedly practiced with my veteran coder pals whenever they were peeping over my issues.
My interviewer then told me that they’d meet up with the team and then call me back on Friday. I’m not sure what happened as I was bricking it the entire day out of sheer fear that I’d failed since I never got a call (fuck, it was easy - but was it easy to the point where I fucked up that much??) - but then I received an e-mail in the evening saying I wasn’t reachable by phone and that I’d passed. Fistpump.
After taking a day or two to let off some steam from the stress of it all (aka playing way too much more of Stardew Valley), it’s time to get back into the coding foray and keep myself sharp. I signed up for the February ‘18 cohort and signed the appropriate agreements and put down my deposit, meaning my pre-course starts in about 6ish weeks.
Will I love it, or will I regret it?
Fuck it, who knows. I’m strapped in and I’ve always been a sucker for chaos, so I might as well make the most of it.
Since I feel like I’ve already waffled on for way too long, a short list of goals for this week:
Finish the Learning to Program book (currently on chapter 8, there’s 14 chapters) with exercises done before my flight to London on Friday night. Don’t think it should be an issue as long as I put in the time.
Figure out what direction I want to take coding wise when I’m done with the book (maybe look into more Ruby, JavaScript, Rails, even something like C# - who knows)
Maintain my Devember pledge with my pal
Getting more comfortable playing Tekken on pad - I’m primarily an arcade stick player, so it’s gonna take some adjusting since I don’t expect to bring it over for my time in London.
Actually go back to the gym. I enjoy it - why do I seek to not go out of my way to do things I enjoy? aaaaaaaaaa