My first days at Andela Bootcamp 16

The online application. The homestudy curriculum and test. Then I went for interview. Finally, finally, I was invited to and went for the Andela Bootcamp for the 16th Recruitment Cycle. And what better way to get the journey started than to go to the wrong Andela office!

Andela Bootcamp 16 started pretty cooly. We all introduced ourselves or were introduced, and there were various welcome speeches. What’s more, the first day was mostly used to discuss how to create and grow healthy, strong relationships- a crucial skill for any professional and more so for a remote software developer. These and more made the first day very cool, far cooler than most of us expected. I, for one, had expected to be “placed on the treadmill” immediately we started Bootcamp. Questions on data structures, algorithms, time and space efficiency, OOP etc were what I expected from the get go. “This thing is far cooler than I expected, than people make it out to be”, I said to myself, as did many of my colleagues.

The big mistake we did was say it loud, loud enough for our trainers to hear. And trust me, they did hear us!

It’s now Wednesday. In yesterday’s morning session alone, we covered three complete skills. But that was minuscule compared to the afternoon session. Men, it was hot! We were given two tasking exercises. The first was to create an application for taking notes using Javascript, complete with methods for creating, editing and deleting notes and more. The second was to solve 5 “easy” quizzes on hackerrank.com. All to be done within two hours! Wow. (They DID extend the deadline for the former task to 8 AM today though, which would have been splendid if a lot of my post-class time wasn’t consumed by being in public transport!)

It’s now Wednesday. And I’ve been somehow scorched. Won’t tell you, my dear reader, the details. But I can tell you this: I WON’T let it happen again.