Onwards & Upwards

What a journey the past ten months has been! I remember starting this program in the full time cohort, being overwhelmed by all the new information and trying to absorb everything at such a quick pace. I remember transferring to the part time cohort to give myself time to really practice coding more and make it more worth it (in my eyes) and I believe that was the best choice I made since my acceptance into the school. Now here I am, with five applications on my belt that I have made on my own, eager to continue practicing what I have learned and start the whole job application process.

I am currently finishing up what I have to get done for this final phase and graduation requirements. All I have left is to submit the five minute video of how my application works, complete the readme for my Github link, study React/Redux concepts and live coding challenges, and schedule my assessment. I am a little ahead so I want to make sure all is good to go to closeout phase 5 while also getting in touch with my career coach over these incoming weeks. I am most likely going to add to my final project with some additional css styling, maybe add a show route for an event, and/or make it possible to update an event using Redux if I have enough time.

Making the change from the full time cohort to the part time cohort was very beneficial to me because it gave me the slower pace (even though 10 months is still fast) I needed to kick myself back into learning mode, especially since its been a couple years since I last attended college. Transferring cohorts also gave me the best of both worlds in the way where I met double the amount of cohort leads as well as peers who were in the same boat as me and that gave me the extra reassurance I needed that I was not alone when I did get stuck. I had three of the best cohort leads: I started with Corinna Brock in full time, got Candice Peters for the majority of part time, and ended with Laura Berge for the last phase of part time. Having all women as leads for the cohorts was the cherry on-top because I knew if they can break barriers and surpass the glass ceiling, so can I! I will continue to strive to be like like them because they really are role models to me: to be confident, knowledgeable, and keep learning new skills from this point forward. Honestly, when I first transferred to the 10 month program within the first month, I genuinely thought 10 months was going to go by so slow, but as soon as I passed each assessment, I knew I was already another 20% done, which really did make time fly other than staying busy completing lessons and labs.

This program was one the best decisions I have ever made in my life, no regrets, and thats without even landing a job yet; however, I want a better life for myself and I believe that want for myself, my future, and my family’s future is what has kept me pushing through the obstacles I have faced thus far and will continue push me to do better and be better. That willingness and persistence is what really keeps my motivation strong. This step in life is not just for myself and my future, but it’s for my family’s future, and I look forward to what opportunities could arise by completing this step. The time, money, and effort is definitely worth it to me and I would recommend Flatiron to anyone. There was more self-teaching than I thought the program was going to have; I thought it was going to be more group lectures and less time focusing alone. As much as that came as a surprise to me, I really benefitted from the reading material and labs in the end because it’s realistic. In a real world job, it is expected that if you don’t know something, to look it up on your own before asking for help so I think it’s important we are taught to uphold ourselves without being too dependent on our technical coaches, cohort leads, and peers.

I noticed the material on Ruby and Rails seems more focused on and in depth than Javascript, React, and Redux. It may just be my perspective, but I found it harder to transition from learning Ruby and Rails to Javascript and React. I believe Flatiron has changed that order of learning phases though. As I start job searching, more job’s I’ve seen do ask for Javascript and Python experience more-so than Ruby & Rails. I do wish Flatiron officially covered algorithms, writing tests in Ruby and Javascript(rspec), and Github more in depth because from what I keep hearing algorithms are super important in job interviews and how Github works with branches, production, and development isn’t exactly covered in the curriculum.

I am grateful to have learned Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, SQLite3, HTML5, CSS, Javascript, React, and Redux. Ruby is my favorite language that I have learned thus far because I feel the most confident in my skills with it compared to Javascript, but I believe that’s because three phases implemented Ruby, which gave me more practice with it. I also enjoy how clean Ruby code is and the fact that it does not have asynchronous actions like Javascript. I am sure the more I practice and understand of Javascript and React, the more confident I’ll feel. Ruby on Rails was my favorite phase because we got to use Ruby language, but on steroids. The MVC (model-view-controller) framework as easy to understand and ActiveRecord has so many macros to get an application started up quickly to be able to focus on functionality and creativity instead.

I still have to pass my last assessment but if I can survive and pass the last 10 months, whats another assessment, right?! I will make sure I pass because I am so close and I finish what I start. I refuse to give up because I want to continue this growth.