Meet the fam: Introducing Natalja
Fam Spotlight| Natalja shares what it was like learning to code and becoming one of our teaching assistants.
My name is Natalja (that’s a German way of spelling Natalia by the way), I’m a recent graduate and assistant teacher at 23 Code Street.
I have always been interested in making websites but, strangely, never considered seriously pursuing it until now that I’m almost 30 years old! Learning to code is opening new doors for me, professionally, as a freelance graphic designer, which is very exciting. Being able to deliver websites for my clients to go with the graphics I made for them is great and it also satisfies my slight control-freak tendencies. On a personal level, I think that it’s very important, nowadays, to know at least a little bit of how things on the web operate when we rely on it so much in and for our day-to-day life.
As much as I love the web, I find it hard to use it for studying. I learn the best when there is a real person in front of me, teaching, and I prefer to study in a small group, where ideas can get passed around and evolve.
23 Code Street provided all of that and made it easy to connect with them, by offering to meet people representing the school in person. I liked the relaxed and engaging atmosphere and the fact that there is a lot of support for students and graduates. I now have a new place to hang out when I freelance and I know people who I can go to for advice when I’m blankly staring at an empty document, trying to make a reasonable quote appear for a new client.
What I like most about coding and the course I participated in, is that it’s all about problem-solving. Every piece of code tends to break as it grows and it’s immensely satisfying to find the problem, solve it and see the result right away! I can be very stubborn and like immediate gratification, so this is a great way to spend my time. Learning JavaScript, especially, was a lot of fun, because it adds things like movement and conditional logic to a website, enabling all kinds of functionality.
Eventually, I hope that I will have the chance to explore all sorts of web-development: front-end, back-end, making apps for various devices… For the time being, I plan to expand my coding knowledge while working on projects for my design clients and hope that adding coding to my skill set will enable me to take my currently part-time freelance business full-time.
You can find me on www.natalja-d.com
Interested in learning with us? Find out more about our upcoming courses and events here.
