Learning to code from 0 to 100mph
Being comfortable not being comfortable
Before I get started with where I am and what I have been doing, I guess I should start with a little bit of a background to me.
I was in management retail for about 5 years, doing everything from measuring curtains for the customer to reading reports so I could inform the colleagues of where the business was at and how we could improve. This was definitely a job that I could do. It was comfortable. It was safe. And I’d already progressed from a weekend colleague to an assistant store manager. But I didn’t feel motivated, and it wasn’t pushing me to my full potential. I wanted a career that would. This got me thinking what do I like doing in my spare time that I could look for in other careers.
I was talking to a few friends about wanting to change my career - researching through many different paths, I found many that sounded fun but nothing that clicked… until someone described programming to me. They said it a logical based/problem solving career, and I thought I’d give it a try by looking at learn to code courses online. For the first time I was writing code. It was engaging and really fun, so I guess this is where it all started for me.
I was about two weeks into an online course when I saw the opportunity for getting onto the School Of Code Bootcamp. In all honesty, I thought that I would not even get onto the course. I applied anyway, determined that even if I did not get onto the Bootcamp then I would still give coding a go and carry on in my spare time.
I sent my interest off to them and got past the first round. With my confidence high, I did the coding part of the assessment which was making my character using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I spent a few days on it (kind of by accident) as I was enjoying playing around with the character - changing hair styles, decorating the background, and animating him was pretty fun! After sending this off, I was happy with what I had done and it gave me more of a taste for coding. I got through to the next round - a phone interview to see if I was right for the course, and if the course would be right for me. I received an email saying they would like me to come to an assessment day to see how I would work as part of a team, and see how my mind worked when trying to solve problems.
The day came, and it was actually really enjoyable. About a week and a bit went by when I was waiting for an email to say if I was on the course or not (this was the longest week of my life) - it did not come and I was upset but knew I would carry on doing what I was doing to get into the industry. Little did I know at the time the email was just late and wow how that changed everything for me.
This was it, I was handing my notice in to work and I thought “I am trading in curtains for code”. I was super excited to get started.
Now we are just over halfway through the course and where can I start to talk about what I have learnt….We learnt HTML and CSS in the first week roughly, I can admit that these were hard and they made me unconformable, which for a long time I had not been so it was very strange for me. The next few weeks we went onto JavaScript and now I was thinking ‘can we not just use HTML/CSS?’ which I never thought I would say!
Its OK to feel unconformable you just have to get used to feeling unconformable and be comfortable with it.
As I am going through the course there are many days where I think I may not be getting it, but then you practice, and practice, and practice! Before you know it you’ve conquered what felt impossible before. You only realise how much you’ve learned when someone asks “so, what have you done so far on the Bootcamp?”. I’ve learnt not to focus negatively on how much you do not know, as in software development there will always be LOADS you do not know. This is a good thing as you have no chance of getting bored at all, and it will push you everyday.
Keep up with my journey on Medium by subscribing, and to find out more about School of Code and the Bootcamp, contact: bootcamp@schoolofcode.co.uk
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.
