Bootcamp: A Day In The Life Of
What a typical day looks like here at School of Code…
08:00 People start to arrive and use their morning to go through things they might be struggling with, chat together, share something cool that they’ve learnt, or just chill out and play chess or Dobble (we love Dobble).
09:30 Time for our Daily Stand Up meeting. We throw a — now very worn — ball around the room, recapping on what we learnt the day before, saying anything people are struggling with, and outlining what we’ll be covering that day.
09:40 The Daily Stand Up is typically followed by 20 minutes on Code Wars, where the cohort go through questions or sometimes write their own to challenge the group.
10:00 Let the lessons commence! Chris will introduce a new topic through a mixture of whiteboard coding, projected coding, and just plain talking.
11:00 Let’s get practical! The topic introduced will be used in a project by the Bootcampers, working in pairs or teams to solve a collection of problems.
12:00 We usually have a guest speaker in at midday — someone from industry who comes and tells the class a bit about their journey into tech, some programming concepts they use daily, and the company they work for. This tends to be followed by so many questions that we’re often late for lunch.
12:30 Lunch time. Eat, refresh and get away from laptops (more Dobble) and a MarioKart tournament or two.
13:30 Back to it! Afternoon lessons begin. This could involve anything from team tasks involving pair programming, walking through code together on the projector, or research projects that are presented back to the class.
15:00 Our Daily Energiser —coding is mentally taxing! It’s around this point in the afternoon that brains start to get tired, so we always do a group activity to bring energy levels back up. This could involve anything from blindfolded MarioKart, mini golf, and Pictionary, to using a poster tube as a rounders bat for a quick game outside. It’s good for team morale and absolutely necessary to refocus for the last part of the day.
15:30 Tasks, exercises, and projects continue, or if presentations have been prepared this is the time that we deliver them.
16:45 And now the Daily Wrap-up — everyone stands and we throw the ball around recapping what we learnt that day and sharing anything we’ve found.
17:00 Day done! Some people stay and continue coding until later in the evening, or head home and recap/recover from a full-on day. Bootcamp social activities are often organised for 18:00+ where we join networking events such as Silicon Canal’s, or go to/host a local coding meet-up.
On Wednesday 17th January, the Bootcamp cohort will pitch their final projects to the Birmingham tech community, potential employers and press. Taking place 14:00–18:00 at our base in iCentrum, Innovation Birmingham Campus, you can register for a free ticket here.
