Overview
This week I just finished my time as a student in Flatiron School's Software Engineering program. This was a path I had not considered until about fall of last year. I have always loved the idea of coding, and I have wanted to integrate it into my career for a really long time; however, I never thought that I would make software engineering my actual career. Here is some of my background on my journey to diving into the tech industry:
High School
Back in high school, I had a major interest in math; I loved problem solving, and math came more easily to me than most other subjects. I took a couple of courses (Visual Basic and C++) in high school, and really enjoyed what I learned. At the time, I was just interested in being a biochemist or meteorologist, so coding seemed more like a fun hobby rather than a career.
College before Flatiron
As an undergraduate who attended six universities, I had a fair amount of career path changes. I went from biochemistry, to athletic training, to pre-physical therapy, to exercise physiology (first bachelor's), to pre-med, to biochemistry (second bachelor's), to being an EMT, to anatomy with teaching certificate (master's), to anatomy education, finally to software engineering (bootcamp certificate).
Software engineering was not part of my career outlook until thirteen years into my education, but I am glad I finally made it! Like I said, I have always thought it would be fantastic to include integrated coding in my career, but having gone through an intensive bootcamp, I feel excited to finally passionately work in an exponentially growing field.
The Transition from PhD Student to a Bootcamp Student
During my time as a PhD student, the final stage before transitioning into software engineering, I loved what I was learning; specifically, I loved teaching and anatomy. The only problem was that the working environment that I operated in did not mesh well with me.
It was as though everything that I had been working towards suddenly seemed wrong. I decided based on how I felt to transition paths majorly into a path that I already had a little familiarity with, that would allow me to problem solve and apply math like I loved to do in high school, that would be flexible, and that would allow room for growth. This is what led me to choosing a bootcamp, specifically Flatiron School due to its great community and eagerness to get me into my new career path!
My Time in the Bootcamp
Flatiron started out with an immense amount of pre-work that I had to complete before the program started. At first I was a little shocked at just how many hours I had to put into this work just to start orientation; now, after reflecting on my time in the bootcamp, I am thankful for the pre-work because not only did it prep me for the intense curriculum ahead, but I got that much more time to learn and take advantage of resources offered to me by the program.
Shortly into the program, I was overwhelmed with the amount of content I was expected to absorb within a short period of time. On top of that, I was traveling, which made the absorption of material even more challenging; however, I was shocked by my first proud moment in the program, passing my first code challenge even though I absolutely thought I failed it.
Into phase two, I developed more confidence in my coding abilities, but I was still pretty behind in lecture and keeping up with everything. I did feel like I was more prepared to take the second code challenge; however, I got stumped on one aspect of it, and I almost failed. This allowed me to self-reflect and try to change my learning style in order to prevent this from happening again.
Into phase three, the content was overwhelming. I did my best to keep up, but there were several labs and readings that took me probably double the time to complete compared to either of the first two phases. It was great to get into the backend though, and I did develop more confidence in passing the next challenge. Unfortunately, I was not able to pass the third code challenge, but I passed the retake and kept trucking on. At this point, only one code challenge remained!
Into phase four, I got to learn how to apply Ruby to Rails, and this made things a lot easier. Active Record and Ruby fundamentals in the previous phase were pretty overwhelming, and this phase had much fewer modules. Still, I fell into the trap of developing overconfidence and failed the last code challenge on the first try; however, I passed the retake without too much difficulty, and finally I was past all of the assessments! This was my greatest triumph because I only now needed to finish a couple projects in order to graduate!
I feel like the fifth phase of Flatiron was actually the easiest. I was finally able to correctly apply my confidence, build out a project with features I had no clue about in the previous four phases, and take pride in the work I put into my new career. The best part: I never felt like the stress and exhaustion wore on me (unlike the PhD program); I love the busy work of coding, and I would never have thought that a program like Flatiron would give me a perspective that could compare something like my PhD program that I personally just did not mesh well with to an equally busy, yet rewarding entry point into my new career.
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