Mentor Manifesto
Hi! My name is Alex Spencer.
I’ve been a Mentor, Squad Leader, and Curriculum Developer at Bloc. But, most importantly, I’ve been a student.
I am a proud Bloc Alumnus.
There are a few moments in time that I can point to as decisions changed my life. Enrolling in Bloc was one of those decisions. I went from being a sales guy to being a remote developer within a year.
My wife an I traveled all over. She trained to be a developer at Bloc. She works remotely for an amazing company.
We are living our best lives. We moved to our dream city. We own a condo in a nice mid-rise downtown. We see family and friends (no matter where they live) as much as we want. We are madly in love (going on 11 years of marriage). We work side by side every day from our favorite coffee shop.
None of the above would be possible if not for Bloc.
Out of every position I held at Bloc, none was more fulfilling to me than being a mentor. I’ve seen my students get placed at amazing companies or start their own profitable freelance businesses. Their lives are forever changed thanks to Bloc.
Sadly, I will be leaving Bloc to work for a non-profit that helps young children improve their literacy scores (more lives changed for the better).
I want to leave you aspiring developers with some parting advice:
1. Pour everything you have into learning. You will only get out what you put in. If you put in ‘just enough to pass’, you will get that much out of it. If you dig in, research, study, and pour your heart and soul into finding a career path that matters to you, you will get back so much more.
2. Learning how to learn — it is a free course online. Google it. Enjoy the horribly dated fashion. But also learn how our brains work. And how you can improve the way you learn.
3. Learning to code is a skill; like learning how to ride a bike, or drive a stick shift transmission. But it is a MUCH harder skill to learn. Think of this like learning to ride a unicycle while juggling flaming hammers. You will fail. You will fall and drop a hammer on your toe. It will hurt. You need to push past it. You need to pick yourself up and continue to fall off that bike. Keep falling. You will fall forward more than backwards. And one day…when you aren’t thinking about it…You will do it!
4. Develop a love of what you do. While working as a PT mentor at Bloc, I was also a Sr Developer at a Ruby shop here in Tampa. One of my roles was as the ‘technical’ interviewer. I would ask the typical questions to determine understanding of programming, Ruby, etc. But my last question was the most important: “What do you do to stay sharp? What blogs, tweets, etc do you consume”. I wasn’t looking for a specific link, or influencer. I was looking for a spark. I was looking for passion. I was looking for someone that wanted to keep learning. If they couldn’t remember _____ concept off the top of there head, I knew I could teach/remind them of it. I can’t teach passion. Your mentor can’t teach passion. They can only channel your passion into success. Develop a love of your craft.
5. Use multiple resources! The number of times I had to see Redux before it made sense to me was easily over 10. Ten different people had to explain Redux to me in ten different ways before it finally made sense. That is okay. That is normal. Seek out YouTube videos, Blogs, and additional resources to cement your learning in addition to a bootcamp program like Bloc. Sometimes you just need to see the same thing more than once before it sticks.
6. Never stop learning! Get comfortable with the fact that there will always be new, creative, awesome ideas in our world. Get comfortable learning. Get comfortable knowing that someone out there will always have more knowledge in X than you. But you have the power to catch up. It is just a matter of priority. It is the million dollar question: “If I gave you a million dollars to learn ______, could you do it?”. So anytime you feel like you will just “never get it”, or you “don’t have the time right now”, ask yourself the million dollar question.
Keep pushing yourself. Keep learning.
Alex Spencer
