This is a submission for the 2025 New Year Writing challenge: Retro’ing and Debugging 2024.
await fetch("example.com/api/opportunity")
For years, I faced rejection after rejection in my journey to enter tech. Like an async function, I kept running with no clear return value. But I kept going, not wanting to write my return statement prematurely and giving up. I found outlets to use and build upon my love of tech: training new hires on product and troubleshooting, contributing to tech projects like improving bug tracking and process enhancements, and more.
Finally, after all that waiting and uncertainty, the call came through—my opportunity was returned. ⏳. In 2024, I was accepted to a one year technical program which included a 4 month bootcamp, project phase, followed by an internship 🚀.
public void StartBootcamp() {
Joining the technical program was a dream come true after years of closed doors 🚪. However, as I’m not one to celebrate, - I was more-so my typical nervous self, fearful that I might not keep up with the program or fail to meet expectations. The first few weeks were filled with uncertainty 😟, but as time went on, I began to embrace the learning process. 📚
Overcoming imposter syndrome:
Early on, I struggled with imposter syndrome, especially when I saw classmatescompilingconcepts more quickly. However, my curiosity and willingness to ask questions helped me push through.Embracing the challenge:
Initially, I saw bugs as barriers 🐞 especially when it meant being stuck on homework in the morning with the deadline ticking closer each second ⏰, but over time, I realized they were opportunities to learn and grow. I joked that I was a bug magnet 🧲. I found that a lot of my learning came from bugs and debugging 🔧.
After each project, I documented my retrospectives in GitHub READMEs, sharing bugs I encountered and how I resolved them. This process helped me reflect on my learnings and share insights with the community 🧑🤝🧑. I posted some of my retros on bugs encountered to dev.to too (example) as I wanted to normalize that failures and mistakes are just as much of a win when we approach them as a way to grow from. 🌱
I also wrote about these experiences on dev.to to help future students navigating similar careers transitions and bootcamps to emotionally navigate
git diff: expectations vs reality
As the program progressed, I worried it would become incrementally harder, like an O(n) curve on a Big O graph 📈. I discovered that while the daily challenges were daunting, my hunger to learn kept me engaged. I especially found it interesting to dive into the “how” and “why” 🤔, and exploring the mechanics of programming fascinated me 🤖.
let interest = “frontend”:
I started the program with a strong interest in front-end design 🎨, influenced by my creative outlets in dancing and singing. One of the first bootcamp projects, I used my prior experience I face with barriers to get jobs to create a frontend mockup of a "refer-All" (referral) website. As I dived deeper into backend work, I found a passion for building APIs and understanding the logic behind the code ⚙️.interest = “fullstack”:
Reflecting on my capstone project, which focused on aggregating crowdsourced accessibility data 🗺️,, I found joy in creating meaningful insights through API and endpoint creation. 🌐 The program curriculum opened my eyes to the beauty of backend work, and I found myself falling in love with it. Towards the end, I found an interest in fullstack - especially enjoying building the endpoints to process and send data, and thinking through the logic of how to render that data on the frontend- akin to choreographing steps in a tango 🕺 💃.
while (newKnowledge) {shareKnowledge++;}
Throughout my journey, I made it a priority to share my knowledge and contribute to the community 🌍. Teaching and helping others is something that fills me, and writing things out helps me marinate and reinforce my own learnings 🧑🍳.
Writing Beginner-Friendly Articles:
I wanted to make learning code fun and accessible to beginners. 💕 This stemmed from my own struggles in bootcamp- noting a lack of beginner-friendly resources, and I am beyond grateful for the dev.to to allow me to share these articles publicly ✍️.
For instance, I explained Big O notation through a story of sorting laundry🗄️. I even created a humorous article of SQL joins as a couple moving in 🏠.Collaboration and Teamwork:
Whether helping with backend issues or discussing complex topics like Spring Boot, I worked with my classmates by sharing tips and tricks on Slack, and creating resources like cheat sheets to make learning easier for everyone. Some of these cheat sheets were also shared publicly of dev.to to help the wider community.Teachbacks:
I recorded teachbacks to better understand complex topics 🎥, talking through my thought process while having the code in front of me 👨💻. Sharing these teachbacks with my cohorts helped others grasp difficult concepts, such as connecting frontend and backend. Additionally, having a library of teachbacks allows me to reference them in the future, making the learning process more effective.
refactoring my post-bootcamp learnings
When bootcamp ended, instead of treating it as a breather after a marathon of a bootcamp- my first thought? Printing my 500+ pages of notes at Staples and reviewing them. I feared my brain would stream API and .filter() everything I’d learned if I didn’t immediately go back and study.
Without the structure of office hours and classes, I proactively took it upon myself to work on some passion projects. Through this, I saw how I learn best hands-on, and doing these projects helped me refactor my understanding, retaining high-level concepts and improving my approach to learning.
Slack API project: After overhearing another mentor’s painpoint for having to manually screenshot and share channels he belongs in to new hires, I built endpoints for the Slack API to allow users to fetch that list instead. While I initially impatiently tried to jump right into coding, a few unsuccessful attempts taught me the importance of reading the documentation 📄 first. I ended up sharing a more beginner-friendly version of it as a blog post 📝.
Portfolio Development: I continued my growth by building out my portfolio, challenging myself to build it full-stack. Deploying it was daunting, but the discomfort allowed me to learn about using PSQL to populate my database 💾, integrating environmental variables, Dockerizing my app 🐳, and migrating Postgres to Heroku. As there was no beginner-friendly resource on deploying backend, I published my learnings on dev.to to help others who may be looking to do the same.
Google Maps Calculator: I helped the Google Maps volunteer community 🗺️ by creating a tool that calculates customized plans to reach their points goal 📈. This project not only benefited the community but also helped me solidify my understanding of React, making concepts click in ways they hadn’t during bootcamp.
where my linked list node .next points toward
Looking back, 2024 has been a year of immense growth—both professionally and personally. I’ve learned that setbacks are part of the journey, and each challenge is an opportunity to grow stronger. I’ve embraced every bug 🦋, every failure 🚧, and every success 🏆 as part of a larger process of self-discovery.
After navigating through the twists and turns of my journey, the .next pointer in my career path led me to an internship in software development. What started as a series of small, incremental steps now feels like a well-defined path. Just like a linked list that’s constantly evolving, I’m continually learning, growing, and adding new skills to my next phase as I dive deeper into the world of tech.
Looking ahead, I know that the road ahead won’t be without its challenges, but with the skills I’ve gained and the mindset I’ve developed in 2024 —I’m ready to take on whatever comes my way. Just like a well-optimized linked list, each new node in my journey will connect me to even more opportunities to learn and grow. 💖
Top comments (4)
I really like how you used pieces of code as your subheads. Clever idea! And congrats, Ashley!
Aw thank you my friend @canro91. I love to be punny and sometimes bringing the humor into coding can help us find those bits of joy especially on tough buggy days. 💕
I'm happy for you that you finally got an opportunity. I also like you're passionate about sharing your knowledge. I believe that sharing/teaching is the best way to learn, because we should have a better understanding to share and teach things. Great article! Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us!
Thank you my kind friend to cheer on. I love how echo on sharing/teaching as the best way to learn. ❤️