I completed an online full-stack web development boot camp over 6 months.
It was part-time, meaning we met 3 times each week, 3 hours at a go.
Here’s what I learned:
I’m not that clever
For a few months before the course started, I plodded through several hours of free coding resources each day, took countless pages of notes defining all kinds of new terminology, and watched programmer’s work through problems on YouTube.
All this, and I was barely able to keep up for the first two weeks of classes.
Then I was behind.
Not completely lost, but well off where I wanted to be, constantly frustrated, muddling along at my own pace until the course wrapped.
This was a “part-time” coding boot camp, too.
It was designed for adults working full-time jobs, with busy lives, kids, and other responsibilities.
Since I didn’t have my work visa at the time, I treated this part-time boot camp like my full-time job.
And I still floundered.
Now that’s humbling.
But the least clever thing I did in the boot camp was finish the boot camp.
Once I’d had the gut feeling it wasn’t for me, that I likely wouldn’t pursue a career in software development afterwards, I should have cut my losses and dropped out.
I didn’t.
I’m stubborn, and I liked the structure the boot camp gave my days and weeks.
I wasn’t the only one who stuck around too long
We started the boot camp with roughly 50 students.
By the end, there were about 35 of us.
That number should have been lower.
While I scrambled to keep above water, being part of a study group, going to office hours, and having weekly tutoring sessions, there were people in my cohort who did as little work as possible.
I became dimly aware of these classmates through working with them on group projects and hearing them ask the teaching assistants questions about assignments I’d completed months prior.
Old content made sense as I learned the new
Most of the content didn’t make sense to me when:
the instructor taught it the first time
our study group tried explaining it to one another
the teaching assistants attempted to use analogies I could grasp
my tutor met with me one-on-one and went over Module Challenges line by line
But content did make sense to me further down the road, often when I was working on something else.
Like I’d be working on the Module 6 Challenge and a piece of content from Module 3 would finally click.
It was as if I was taking a cooking course and halfway through, as I was learning how to flip an omelet, my onion-chopping technique suddenly and drastically improved.
Don’t do something only to make money at it
I did the boot camp because I was seduced by the thought of a 6-figure income.
Unfortunately, programming felt like laying digital bricks.
It was extremely tedious.
I’d finish a project and only see the flaws that needed further tinkering.
My mind kept going, “Finish the course. Find a job. Work 5 years. You’ll be in an awesome financial position. That’s it.”
That wasn’t it.
I’m grateful to have participated in the course, to have been in the orbit of some interesting people for a short while, and to have a basic understanding of how websites and applications are built. Those are all good things.
Sometimes you need to walk all the way to the end of the wrong road before you can find the right road.