As I begin the last phase of the Flatiron School self-paced software engineering program, I wanted to write a blogpost recapping my code journey thus far. Even though 2021 was one of the worst years in my life, as well as for my family, the Flatiron bootcamp was a bright spot among the negatives since I knew I would have a great career to look forward to once I completed the course.
I enrolled in the Flatiron School back in late February of 2021, and started off strong in the lessons since I had been doing the free JavaScript intro lessons, so I was pretty familiar with how labs and lecture material worked. After a month or so of being fairly consistent in my lessons/labs, I felt I was on pace to finish the course within 6 months, but then bad luck kept striking. For the next few months, my family and I dealt with a death in our extended family at least once a month, taking my focus away from my studies. While I was helping my family through this tough time, my dad ended up getting laid-off, so I decided to pick up a part-time job to keep the money coming in. These 2 things really made it difficult to stay consistent with my lessons, until my dad ended up getting a new job and I could put my focus back towards the Flatiron program. Around October/November, I jumped back into my labs/lessons and chugged through the material so that I could finish as fast as possible without compromising my learning. Fast forward a few months and I am now entering the last phase of the program, more confident than ever in my coding abilities and eagerly anticipating my future career in software.
Back in early 2021, I never could have dreamed that I would be able to code and create apps/websites from scratch within the span of a year, yet here I am with a skillset that has nothing to do with the things I spent 4 years in college learning about. Without the Flatiron School, I was on the path to become a dentist, and hearing stories from my friends that are currently in dental school about how miserable they are makes me extremely grateful for this program. Not to mention I saved about $250k in student debt and 3 years of additional schooling by shifting careers.
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