Fullstack Academy
March 20, 2015Yesterday I received an email that contained great news! I have been accepted by Fullstack Academy to attend their April class. I’m going to do it! I still can’t believe it. For anyone unfamiliar with web development immersives (aka coding bootcamps), these are generally 3-month intensive courses dedicated to training students to become full-stack developers. Graduates of these courses are equipped with the skills and are prepared to succeed as junior developers upon graduation. Fullstack has been recognized as one of the best institutions in this space and I am truly delighted by their decision to accept me.
Why am I doing this?
Four months ago, I quit my job to pursue learning JavaScript in hopes of working as a junior developer at a software company. I learned a great deal in my time off, to the point where I felt I was ready for the big time. I applied to some jobs and internships, had one interview then quickly realized how little I knew. I honestly re-evaluated my last four months. Truth be told, I was neither disciplined nor structured throughout. I would have periods of flow, but as soon as I hit a wall (boy, did I hit walls), I would get derailed and lose momentum. I consider myself an individual with a respectable level of Google-fu, but the wealth of knowledge available on the internet requires a different level of intuition to parse and differentiate between the varying levels of helpfulness and relevance. It’s very easy to be overwhelmed by this, especially when you’re still wet behind the ears.
I had reached a fork in the road and an important decision to make. What path should I take to bridge the knowledge and skill gap to get to my desired goal of software engineer? Do I continue my inefficient learning or enroll in a bootcamp to get from zero to hero in 3-4 months? The answer was a no-brainer. To make the decision required me to swallow my pride though. I had oft thought that I could take the self-taught route and save the large sum of money that these schools require for tuition. This was when I valued money more than time. My time off has taught me the true value of time. The first month of my fun-employment was me relishing the newfound freedom I had reclaimed. First thing I did? Binge-watched anime. Watched Death Note in two days. While I was proud of this feat at the time, after a month of consuming, consuming, and consuming brain noise, I realized how much time I was squandering. Another thing, I’ve been penny-wise and dollar-foolish. I didn’t think it was worth spending that kind of money on myself. But I’ve learned the importance of investing in your brain, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m investing in myself, my success, and my future.
Application Process
So I applied a couple weeks ago and went through the three stages of the application process. The three parts being, a code assessment, an interview, and the decision process. I’m not going to get into too much detail about the process, but preparation was really really important. If you’re interested in applying, I would recommend going through the recommended resources and practice doing coding exercises on a site such as coderbyte.com. Honestly, even some of the Easy problems were very challenging for me. Some of them took over an hour to solve, and not without help from Google. This application process was by no means easy. I was thoroughly challenged in every coding practical, which I believe to be telling of the level in which Fullstack pushes its students. (Being challenged is a good thing.)
Advice & Musings
For anyone looking to attend a web development immersive, spend some time to figure out if you really want to be a developer. It’s a large time and monetary investment, so minimize the cognitive bias and figure out your goals and motives. This took me a little while. I am interested in design and technology, but I never thought about programming. I didn’t think I was smart enough. It’s difficult and frustrating in the beginning because thinking like a computer requires you to break down tasks we humans take for granted. The brain does so much behind the scenes that it literally requires you to break down tasks to a very specific series of instructions. Computers are dumb, they need to know every little detail. Logical thinking gets easier over time as you spend more time telling your computer what to do. As you do this, life sort of changes.. at least for me. I am less emotionally driven, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I think about life more objectively and thinking about life in this manner kinda makes sense. Life is math, math is life. By the way, I recently read Scott Meyer’s Off to Be the Wizard, it’s relevant to this topic of life being simply data and algorithms, highly recommended! Fun read.
Anyway, new beginnings! So happy to be taking this new step in life.