The Other Boot Drops: The Tech Bootcamp Experience (Part 1)

The story of how I came to apply to a tech bootcamp is surprisingly mundane and embarrassingly random. During March of 2015 I was the host at a popular Korean BBQ restaurant working for minimum wage and tips. I was like many twenty-somethings living in the Bay Area; a college graduate with a useless degree working a dead-end job and living day by day.

Sometime in the middle of March of 2015 I came down with a cold and called in sick. Lying in bed all day I quickly exhausted all of my usual social outlets. All the links were purple, I’d taken all the Buzzfeed quizzes, I read all the status updates, my free-to-play games were recharging.

It was then that I saw an ad for Code Academy in my Facebook feed. Having nothing better to do I brought up the account I had made with Code Academy ages ago on a whim and picked up where I left off. Initially it was just to pass the time but as I completed lesson after lesson I found myself more and more absorbed.

I had gone to school as a language studies major and had spent my time learning ASL, French, Korean, and a couple of other languages. I slowly began to draw the parallels between languages and programming languages like JavaScript and the commonalities between the two solidified and held my interest.

It was during a Facebook break from Code Academy that I ran across another ad, this time for a coding bootcamp called General Assembly. The timing was impeccable. Within five minutes I was browsing GA’s website reading course descriptions and start dates. In a fit of whimsy I decided to send in an application and see what would happen. I received a call from an amazingly upbeat and friendly woman named Leah the next day and after a phone interview and an in-person interview I was accepted into the Web Development Immersive course set to start at the end of April.

The gravity of this chain of events didn’t really hit me until around mid April when I realized that I had signed up to become a web developer. Having had no aspirations to code until a month prior I was shocked at the sudden twist and pace of things that I had set into motion.

Being a Bay Area native who had no programming experience and knowledge tech was always a looming, far off figure; something ephemeral, mysterious, and obscure. And this was my very first realization of tech: If you don’t work in tech it is very very easy to ignore it. Apps, browsers, and websites I used and still use everyday just didn’t translate into real companies and real people creating them. And suddenly I was on course to become one of them.

I began imagining my life as a developer. To say that money was not a huge factor in my decision to attend General Assembly would be a bald faced lie, but it wasn’t the only one. I realized how valuable my position would be as a native turned web developer. Here was my chance not only to better my situation, but also the situations of other Bay Area natives. I wanted to be successful so that I could wield that affluence to draw in others, give opportunities, even the playing field, ignite awareness, and foster a sense of responsibility in transplant developers.

But before all of that came bootcamp. I had no idea what to expect and I was honestly scared and nervous. Before my noble intentions came the question of survival; could I make it? Did I have it in me? General Assembly seemed to think so. And so at the end of April of 2015 I began my first day as a bootcamp student.