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Bradley Matera
Bradley Matera

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Full Sail University: How Formal Training Shaped My Approach

#career #careerdevelopment

Context: Finished Full Sail’s Web Development B.S. in October 2025 (GPA ~3.8). Still looking for my first paid SWE role.

AI assist: ChatGPT helped reorganize my notes; I cross-checked with syllabi/transcripts.

Status: Honest recap, not an attempt to inflate coursework into production experience.

Fast-paced sprints

Program snapshot

Full Sail’s Web Development program moves fast. Everything is built around four-week sprints—controlled chaos with a deadline. You focus on one course at a time, but each month hits like its own bootcamp.

  • Format: 4-week sprints with rotating instructors and rubrics.
  • Schedule: Workload shifted constantly—some weeks light, others unexpectedly heavy.
  • Deliverables: Working build, documentation, rubric checklist, and a retro or reflection.
  • Grading weight: Docs/presentation quality mattered almost as much as code.

Course areas that shaped me the most

Full Sail’s titles shifted over time and instructors ran things differently, so grouping by area is more honest than listing exact course names.

Course area Key deliverable Skills reinforced
Full-stack project cycles (Project & Portfolio) Building and iterating on a React + Node app each month Iteration, planning, accepting critique, demoing unfinished work with confidence
Server-side development REST APIs, templating, session-based auth in Node/PHP Routing, state handling, error patterns, readable backend structure
Cloud and application deployment AWS Academy labs with services like Elastic Beanstalk, RDS, CloudWatch (sandbox depth) Basic cloud mental models, logging, monitoring, cost awareness, rollback habits
Systems and configuration basics Linux permissions, basic Nginx concepts, small automation scripts Ops hygiene, troubleshooting steps, repeatable checklists, scripting discipline
Human-Computer Interaction & UX Usability testing, accessibility checks, persona-driven design exercises UX empathy, accessibility awareness, clearer communication with non-technical people

Signature projects & evidence

Capstone: Car-Match (personal learning project)

  • Stack: React, Node.js/Express, MongoDB Atlas, Render (backend), GitHub Pages (frontend)
  • Reality: End-to-end matching prototype I built myself. Handles auth, profiles, uploads, scoring, and real-time updates once the backend wakes up. Runs on free-tier infra, so I classify it as a learning project—not production.
  • Repo + demo: https://github.com/BradleyMatera/car-match

Debugging late nights

Other projects that shaped my learning

Server Management Lab

Covered Linux hardening, Nginx basics, and bash automation. I didn’t build full AWS pipelines there; most of my ops habits came later from personal projects and the AWS internship.

Communication touchpoints

This was a remote program. I didn’t do weekly stand-ups with classmates. Most “comms practice” came from Tech Talk (an after-class group) and occasional Q&A with instructors. The status-report style in my repos is a personal habit, not from formal stand-ups.

Habits I carried forward

  • Sprint rhythm: Intake → prototype → critique → iterate → deliver.
  • Docs before code: Clarity, diagrams, tests, deploy notes, retro—no “done” without docs.
  • Feedback resilience: Frequent scope pivots desensitized me to change.
  • Honesty logs: Every project tracks what’s done, broken, and next.

Cloud labs

Beyond coursework

  • AWS Cloud Support Internship: Concepts at school; reality at AWS—log hunting, broken infra diagnosis under time pressure.
  • Community involvement: CIRIS docs, Tech Talk Club, alumni Q&A, small OSS fixes.
  • Personal experiments: WebGPU shaders and Zig parsers filled curriculum gaps and showed where academics stop and the real world begins.

What the program didn’t cover (well)

  • Deep CS theory (algorithms, data structures beyond basics).
  • Production-scale DevOps (multi-account AWS, Terraform modules, blast radius).
  • Real on-call culture—no paging, SLAs, or incident triage.
  • System design beyond small apps.
  • I compensate with LeetCode, cloud labs, ACloudGuru, personal projects, and the internship.

A week-in-the-life during a sprint

There was no single “normal week.” Each course had its own rhythm. The consistent anchors:

  • Weekly project due Sunday
  • If discussions existed: initial post Thursday, two replies Sunday

Everything else moved. Some weeks felt like lightweight labs; others like a four-week hackathon squeezed into six days. Rubrics sometimes contradicted themselves. The real skill was adjusting, interpreting, and self-organizing.

  • Early-week orientation: Rubric drops, announcements, decoding expectations (every instructor interpreted rubrics differently).
  • Mid-week chaos (or silence): Could be UI flows, backend logic, DB schema, AWS lab, accessibility review, or waiting for clarifications.
  • Late-week push (Thu–Sun): Partners available, critiques posted, requirements clarified—prototypes became real builds.
  • Sunday crunch: Final packaging, retros, last-second fixes, demos, screenshots, README tweaks. Most submissions landed in a 6–10 hour window before 11:59 PM ET.

Sunday crunch energy

Bottom line: no ritual Monday–Friday—only adaptation, deadlines, and evidence. That forced me to build my own systems for consistency and delivery.

Mistakes I made (and fixed) — the real list

  • Building the whole idea instead of the assignment: I’d architect like it was a startup app and chase features no one graded. Fix: work backward from the rubric and ship faster.
  • Over-researching instead of starting: I’d read docs, overthink tooling, and delay writing code. Fix: prototype early, even if rough—speed doubled once something existed.
  • Light Git/GitHub use early on: Forgot to commit/branch and lost work. Fix: proper commits/branches became natural once projects grew (Car-Match).
  • Letting vague rubrics stall me: I’d wait for clarification and lose days. Fix: make assumptions, document them, and move.
  • Underestimating “simple” tasks: UI, APIs, deploys, and auth always took longer. Fix: pad time and treat “simple” as “unknown.”
  • Not testing on real devices: Early projects broke on phones/tablets. Fix: test on mobile and use dev tools for responsiveness.
  • Deploying last-minute: Sunday-night deploys failed (cold starts, cache, env vars). Fix: deploy early/often—never first deploy on Sunday.
  • Working solo by default: In groups I’d carry too much. Fix: delegate by rubric items, set boundaries.
  • Not documenting decisions: Forgetting my own reasoning led to rework. Fix: write decisions while coding.
  • Perfection before done: Polished UI and rewrote working code needlessly. Fix: Done → Working → Better.
  • Avoiding “boring” topics: Accessibility, testing, comments, error messages, validation. Fix: school and Car-Match forced me to care.
  • Trying to learn everything at once: Spread too thin across front/back/cloud/devops/design. Fix: narrow focus to 1–2 skills per month and rotate.

Checklists and retros

How I present this to employers

  • This degree gave me reps, not production.
  • I pair each course with a link + one-sentence takeaway.
  • I’m explicit about gaps and how I’m closing them.
  • I show projects, runbooks, evidence, retros—not hype.

Advice to future Full Sail students

  • Treat rubrics like user stories—finish with evidence.
  • Keep a parking-lot list so you don’t chase stretch ideas mid-sprint.
  • Record Looms weekly; they save presentations.
  • Build one anchor project outside class to unify skills.

Metrics and receipts

  • ~20 projects shipped.
  • Every sprint: at least two critique loops.
  • GPA ~3.8; strongest in docs/presentations.
  • Post-grad: weekly code reviews with peers to keep cadence alive.

Artifacts & links

Most portfolio/GitHub repos come from Full Sail work, but syllabi, rubrics, and runbooks are private or lost. If you want specific artifacts, I can share what I have privately.

Key takeaways

  • Formal education gave me structure, accountability, and reps presenting/defending work.
  • Side projects and internships are essential to stress-test those skills.
  • Full Sail drilled an honesty mindset: document what’s done, what’s broken, and what’s next—no fluff.

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