My Juno Journey | Pt. 1

I had a lot of ideas of what I wanted to be growing up and it changed frequently.

In high school, I decided I was going to become a forensic pathologist. I loved science and I was intrigued by forensics; it seemed perfect. After some research, and learning that it would take up to 17 years of extra schooling, I decided it wasn’t a good fit. I wasn’t someone that had one passion they knew they always wanted to pursue. I felt lost and I didn’t know what I should do.

In grade 11, I took a Media Studies course online. I ended up liking the content and I was intrigued by media. I have grown up loving movies and I looked into becoming a Casting Director. There isn’t exactly a post-secondary program for casting, so I decided to go into Media Studies to get a background I thought would be helpful in casting.

I accepted my offer to University of Guelph-Humber, a small school in Toronto that allows you to get a diploma from Humber and a degree from Guelph in just 4 years. Their Media Studies program stuck out to me and I loved the small size of the school.

In second year, we had a mandatory Web Design class. I didn’t really know what to expect going into it. On the first day, I remember the teacher gave us an intro to HTML and CSS and I felt completely lost. I wrote my first lines of code and I had no idea what was going on. A few friends of mine and I were all confused. It was literally learning a new language.

My father is in tech and I asked him to explain to me what the heck was going on in that class. I figured I would just get by and try my best; Just get through the class and then be done.

But something wild happened. I started to love it. Like, really love it. I always loved math, the logic behind it. And I found a lot of similarities between coding and math. I love that it was structured and there were reasons things worked or didn’t. It felt like magic: writing code and seeing the changes on the webpage. It was so exciting.

It also seemed like the perfect medium between design and tech. I was able to be creative but it also had the math-ish element that I loved.

It was the first time in my life that I had a passion that I wanted to pursue as a job. After that class, all I wanted was to know more. I was inspired and motivated. I wanted to be like my teacher and do this all the time. It was so much fun.

The summer after that class, my mom found a Ladies Learning Code course I could do. It was a 9-week Digital Skills program that taught more HTML, CSS and went into topics such as SEO, and a bit of jQuery. I loved the course not only for the female empowerment aspect but for learning more modern techniques and industry best practices. It was an amazing experience.

The instructors and mentors talked a lot about a school called HackerYou (now Juno College). They talked about their bootcamp. I went home and researched it. And I remember having this overwhelming feeling that this was my new dream. To go to this school after university.

Goal in sight, I was committed. I took a few more web design classes in university and worked towards my goal.

However, in third year I took a Javascript course that was really rough. It was again an entirely new language, and the teaching style really didn’t match my learning style. Almost everyone was lost and confused. We weren’t really taught concepts; we were more so supposed to just code along with the teacher. I was really disappointed and I doubted my future career. Maybe I would just be able to do HTML and CSS?

After I graduated in the spring of 2019, my next step was to apply for Juno’s Web Development Bootcamp. I was a bit worried that I was too young to apply and so I went in to talk to someone about whether I was ready. I was lucky enough to talk to Steven, a student success consultant at Juno. And I’m so grateful I did. He assured me I wasn’t too young, but that they recommend I take some classes before heading straight into applying for Bootcamp.

The Bootcamp application process is hard, and rightfully so. You put in an online application and then from there, you are sent a tech test. After that, you do answer online interview questions. Then if you meet requirements, you are invited for an in-person interview. From there you may or may not be accepted, or put onto a waitlist.

Steven suggested that to ensure my skills are up to the standards and for my greatest chance at success, I should take their Web Development (HTML and CSS) course followed by their Javascript one. I was hesitant, both because of my fear of Javascript and because I thought I knew a lot about HTML and CSS (oh silly Kay). But I figured if this is what would help me get into the Bootcamp then that’s what I’ll do. Thank you Steven! You are a gem, and I am so grateful for your help.

I couldn’t wait. It was happening. That summer before I started my first course, I was looking at Juno’s social media indulging in seeing what everyone was creating. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to create amazing work.

My dream was getting closer and closer. I could feel it and I was ready.

I wanted to show my Juno Journey in a lot of detail and so to do that I want to break it up into a couple parts. Thank you for reading and I’ll see you in the next part!