Bootcamps

Lyle Dickie
Nov 7 · 7 min read

I’m currently a student at Flatiron School in the web development track. I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to do a bootcamp and I finally took the plunge a few weeks back. Overall it has been a really enriching experience, but it has also been incredibly challenging for a variety of reasons. The time commitment and the work itself are much more challenging than I was expecting, and I constantly feel like I’m on the back foot and having to play catch-up. In short, I feel exactly the way that I should be feeling seven-and-a-half weeks into a fifteen week bootcamp.

I was very curious what this bootcamp would be like before I started as my only experience with a bootcamp in the past was when I joined the Air Force back in 2001. This post is an exploration of some of the similarities and differences that I’ve noticed between the two experiences.

Differences

Let’s start with the differences. The origin of your motivation is very different. When I was making my way through basic training it felt like I had a little dude with a big hat yelling at me around the clock. This is very motivating. No one really want’s to be yelled at, so you do the things that you have to do in order to avoid it. In a coding bootcamp everyone is very nice and they talk to you about learning to learn and finding your learning style. Without someone cheering you on in an aggressive manner you have to find your own methods to stay motivated. I do this by setting small goals that I can achieve throughout the day and the week. It’s really satisfying to finish something and cross it off my list.

Another major difference is that you are responsible for your own physical health and maintenance while on the path to being a developer. I did a lot of pushups in my first bootcamp, and I haven’t done a single one in my second. I rock climbed a lot (four times a week) before I started at Flatiron, but over the weeks that has dwindled to once a week if I’m lucky. When you are overwhelmed one of the first things to go out the window is physical activity. The way that I have been dealing with this is by scheduling times with friends to go climbing. I feel bad being a flake so I tend to follow through. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about the health and mental benefits of exercise, make sure that you schedule some into your life.

I think most obvious among the differences is that a developers bootcamp is really long in comparison to the Air Force bootcamp. The longer you spend doing something really hard, the longer you have to question your motivations and abilities. Impostor syndrome is real and it will hit the majority of people multiple times in a bootcamp. It’s important to remember that it’s normal to have dark times but you are smart enough and you will get through them as long as you keep trying. There’s a direct correlation between effort and ability, although there is often a bit of lag. Stick with it. Fifteen weeks is a long time to keep your eye on the ball and stay motivated.

Similarities

While it’s easy to find differences it is even easier to find similarities.

I was exhausted for the eight weeks I spent in Texas taking my first steps towards being a soldier. It got to the point where I would pull my hat low over my eyes while I was standing in formation and take short naps while somehow managing to stay aware of what was going on around me. It sounds ridiculous, but when you are overwhelmed you are forced to come up with absurd coping strategies. At Flatiron I’ve tried to keep in mind that experience and how the lack of sleep affected my performance. I do my best to get eight hours of sleep a night, even if that means closing my laptop mid lesson and picking it back up the next day. There will always be more work, I just need to make sure that I am in a good state to execute each day.

Bootcamps are also about sacrifices. I mentioned earlier that I’ve had to sacrifice my workouts a bit, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I spend less time with my partner and my friends, I don’t have time to participate in activities that I normally did, and my social life is almost non-existent. I didn’t have a lot of control over these aspects when I was working to become a soldier, but being a little older and hopefully wiser I am realizing the importance scheduling the time to do the things that I love. I spent the night before my last code challenge playing with a new JavaScript library. Was that time well spent? I think so. It helped to remind me why I was learning to program and that lifted my spirits and renewed my motivation to keep studying. If all you are doing is making sacrifices you probably aren’t going to be able to maintain for very long. You need to find the time to have fun (7th floor ;) and find motivation in the things that you love. You need to constantly remind yourself why you are making these sacrifices. Sacrificing to sacrifice is a just a bit masochistic otherwise.

Another key similarity that I am starting to understand has to do with the timescale of the learning processes I am involved with. A bootcamp is an intense period of basics and it will put you on track to become what it is that you are aiming for. But for most of us the journey is longer than just the bootcamp. When I was in the military my formal and informal learning continued for years after I graduated. I had six months in an intense electronics engineering course that in many ways was more challenging than the bootcamp, and that was followed by multiple years of on the job training. I was probably two to three years into my career before I started really understanding how everything worked and feeling confident that I could take on most challenges on my own without having to lean heavily on my resources. I think that post Flatiron is going to be a very similar experience. I’m probably going to spend an intense period after I graduate learning more and filling in gaps in my knowledge, followed by an intense period of mentorship on the job.

You will want to quit. It will feel absolutely impossible at times. It isn’t, it’s just very hard to maintain focus and motivation on anything hard for more than a few minutes, let alone the multi-week commitment of a bootcamp. During this time you will build strong connections with your peers and these people will become your resources and the people that you know you can rely on for support throughout your journey. I keep hearing stories of other cohorts that came before continuing to support each other during the job hunt and after, and feeling like I am part of that community is very important to me.

Both of my bootcamps were big commitments that I stepped into with really understanding what was going to be asked of me. Understanding what you are going to be doing and preparing specifically for it is probably the best thing that you can do to set yourself up for success. Preparation pre-bootcamp is also really critical and you’ll regret it if you slack off on this point. I wish that I had run more and done more pushups as that would have really helped me in my last bootcamp. For this one I wish that I had learned Javascript to a higher level before commencing. It’s hard to do the work after you start because you are deluged with a million other things.

At the end of the day I think that a bootcamp of any variety is a great way to jumpstart your understanding of almost any topic. It just takes preparation, planning, and an understanding of yourself and what your strengths and weaknesses are if you hope to get the most out of it.

Lyle Dickie

Written by

curious

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