End of the road…
This Week at Craft Academy — V3 June 2017
This week we celebrate Summer solstice in Scandinavia. It’s mid-June, school is out and nature has burst into life. It seems like the sun never sets (in fact, in the north of Sweden it doesn’t, and in the south only for an hour or two). In the Nordics, this calls for celebration! Friends and family gather for the most typically Swedish tradition of all: Midsummer.
While everybody outside of the CraftAcademy eco system is preparing for some time off and party, the level of activity within our organization remains high although we also prepare ourselves for a celebration. This week is about wrapping up the final project of our senior cohort. After 12 weeks of hard work, they have come to end of the bootcamp.
Traditionally we gather the juniors, seniors and our past graduates for final project presentation, dinner and drinks. This time around is no exception. Our Seniors, Cleas, Benjamin, Max and Dania, has been working really hard on their final project and are standing by ready to unveil their SaaS application, Taskr, to rest of us.
Graduation day is always a hectic but also very emotional day for us coaches and learners alike. 12 week may not seem as a long time but believe me when I say that all the things we do, the challenges we face and obstacles we overcome together, form a special bond among us. The journey through the curriculum of Craft Academy is an emotional rollercoaster — for everyone involved. At the time we reach the end of the road, we’ve become almost like a family — with all that comes with it. A quote that reflects the atmosphere at among students, coaches and staff is: “When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching — they are your family. ” ― Jim Butcher
And God knows a lot of things kan fell like “hell” when transitioning into this industry and learning to code.
One particular group that experienced this recently was our juniors. At the end of week 1 they got a taste of “hell” when asked to solve a set of problems during a live coding session with a coach. These sessions are performed bi-weekly in order to a) assess the students current level and help us coaches to support her/him and b) prepare the student for situations where she or he will have to be evaluated by an potential future employer (pair-programming sessions or whiteboard-interviews are often a part of a hiring process). Getting used to live coding takes time and is often an emotional experience. Quite so for our current juniors as well. It was tough but they all prevailed — that is the most important take away.
As the world outside of Craft Academy is getting ready to celebrate Midsommar we are wrapping things up here as well and taking the Friday off. The Students will go on a 2 week break and we will get some much needed time to catch up on our own internal backlog. No rest for the wicked, as they say.
Glad Midsommar!
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