It's increasingly hard to believe that the School of Code bootcamp for cohort 4 ended two months ago. Since my last post, I've learnt so much my brain at one point felt like an overstuffed suitcase, with knowledge hanging out of it like shirt sleeves and old socks. But brains are like muscles, you just need to work out a bit and your capacity for knowledge expands, and the School of Code is like an extensive gym subscription for your mind.
I've said before that School of Code was a life changing experience for me, and I don't even have a job in tech yet. I knew I loved to work in creative fields and I loved being an illustrator, but there was always something missing from it, it felt like I had stagnated a bit, and it wasn't just because freelance was 90% marketing. Working on projects on School of Code showed me that what I really love is team based creative problem solving. I've always admired creative teams like Pixar and Disney, watching their behind the scenes documentaries always made my heart hurt because I wanted that, and I thought that illustration and animation was how to get there. School of Code threw me into that exact same environment without me even realising that's what I was looking for, and without having a clue that you can get that experience in tech.
(PS. Demo day was an experience in itself and if you want to check out my teams presentation you should definitely go do that).
I spent the first couple of days after Demo Day in a state of shock, partially because suddenly there was no project to work on, there was no presentation to prepare for, we were able to just... stop. It was a strange transitional period from constant, directed learning to having far too much time on my hands. It was definitely good to give my brain a little bit of a break from the intensity that was the bootcamp (which, by the way, is called a bootcamp for a reason). But after a brief period of rest, it was time to get back on the horse. Learning never stops, and I have learnt from experience that learning is like riding a bike - you've gotta keep pedalling or it'll be hard to get started again.
Throughout the course I gravitated strongly towards more front end technologies; they made the most sense to me, and the back end took a lot of getting used to. This was probably unsurprising to most people - I come from an illustration background, so of course I would love front end, right? But I've had a fascination for the back end for years, and while my strength is absolutely in front end I want to grow and develop my back end skills to scratch that itch. I took my basic knowledge of Node.js and began building a Twitter bot. This was my first node.js only project, built essentially out of a lazy desire to not have to search through Twitter hashtags to find new artists on the app. Art Every Hour was born, a bot that uses the Twitter API to search once an hour for tweets containing the #art hashtag and retweets the latest one. This was probably my first time realising just how powerful APIs could be, as I'd only previously used them to interact with a front end and hadn't made the connection to more useful applications. It's funny how despite using the technology alongside React for a few months, I hadn't really understood its potential.
There have been more things I've been learning - I'm currently working on a freelance project alongside a few other School of Code graduates where we've had to learn how to use Shopify as well as learn Liquid from scratch, to edit a clients store. Doing these little side projects has been great not just because we're learning new technologies but because it's reinforcing everything we learnt at School of Code - how to work within agile teams, how to learn, and how to talk to clients.
Finishing an intense bootcamp and going out into the world on your own is intimidating to say the least, especially in this current landscape where the future is so uncertain. Life after School of Code could have been stagnant, boring, and unproductive, if I'd have let it. But one thing that is so important that School of Code has taught me above all else, is to stay connected. Self directed learning is hard and isolating, but there are so many supportive people out there who only want to help us grow and improve, and actually opening ourselves up to that support is one of the most important things we can do. Especially your fellow bootcamp victims, sorry, cohorts.
Here's to constant and never ending growth!
Piper
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