These Pioneering Graduates Inspire Us To Learn More In The New Year
It’s 2018, and many of us are looking for ways to advance our lives and careers—new skills, new roles, new opportunities. If you’ve considered embarking on a new learning journey in the new year—brushing up on technical skills, exploring a new field, initiating a career change—we invite you to find some powerful inspiration in stories from our students.
In the final months of 2017, the first graduates of our Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program took to LinkedIn to express their excitement over completing their program. They shared valuable insights, chronicled personal challenges, discussed favorite aspects of the program, and expressed gratitude to their fellow students, mentors, and instructors. Many of these posts served to highlight key components of the Udacity learning experience:
- membership in a supportive community of like-minded people
- access to world-class instructors and industry-leading subject-matter experts
- schedule flexibility to fit any lifestyle or life stage
We’d love to share some of these wonderful posts with you!
Learning from industry leaders with 1:1 support
In his post, András expressed gratitude for the enjoyment this challenge provided, and thanked the instructors, mentors and colleagues that combined to make his experience such a positive one.
“Big thanks to David Silver, Sebastian Thrun, et. al. for organizing, to Stewart DeSoto for being an amazing mentor and last, but not least, a big thanks to Frank Fuqiang Xu and team for making a fantastic Capstone Project with Carla (Udacity’s self-driving car).”
If you’re surprised to see a graduate from an online learning program expressing such positive feelings about his community, don’t be! Human connection is a big part of the Udacity learning experience, and our students regularly cite community as one of the most valuable aspects of their time with us.
For a wonderful footnote to András’ story, scroll down and take a look at the first two people to comment on András’ post—David Silver and Frank Fuqiang Xu! Their congratulatory comments reinforce the strength of the connections our students make with one another, and with us!
Balancing learning and a career
If you’ve been curious about how an online program might fit into your schedule, you might find this post from Jelena Kocić to be quite instructive. She’s a mother, a full-time software engineer, and a PhD student. She’s also a Nanodegree program graduate! She describes her experience as being an “exciting journey of sleepless nights, and working through the weekend.”
Flexibility
Jelena, like so many of us, has a lot going on. Fortunately, our platform is built to be flexible. While you need to meet deadlines, and keep pace with the curriculum and the work of your peers, you can do so in ways that align with your outside commitments, and not risk missing anything.
Community Support
An engaged community of students and instructors is a hallmark of the Nanodegree program experience, and the existence of this community can make all the difference when it comes to delivering something that goes beyond straightforward online learning.
“This Nanodegree program is much more than just a learning (experience). It is about the community! About connecting with amazing engineers, great researchers and enthusiastic students all around the world. We all came with different backgrounds, with different aims, but with the same state of mind, the same thirst to participate in this new industrial revolution.”
In the end, its about employability…
With world-class instructors, engaged mentor support, and a vibrant community, comes the final piece, career relevance—ensuring these new skills will be valued in the real world.
“I will use all of my knowledge to make a dream come true: Making mobility affordable and safe for everyone…I want to thank Sebastian Thrun, David Silver and many more for creating this awesome Nanodegree that allowed us to run code on an actual self-driving car!”
Marc Reichelt’s dream is a lofty one, but he’s making it happen, and taking all the right steps. By learning new skills related to computer vision, robotic controls, localization, and path planning, Marc can go out into the world and apply his talents in the automotive industry, secure in the knowledge that his new-found skills are proven — he’s tested his code on Udacity’s self-driving car, Carla!
Learn it, apply it
Udacity students learn skills that have immediate value in today’s jobs landscape, and they do so by working on real-world projects. In the Android Developer Nanodegree program, students are tasked with creating an app from scratch and publishing it to the Google Play Store as their capstone project. In the Digital Marketing Nanodegree program, students run real ad campaigns using real budgets. In all of our programs, students build up a valuable portfolio of work, making a Nanodegree program a perfect solution to the age-old Catch-22 of needing experience in order to get experience.
2018 is the Year of Lifelong Learning!
2018 is a new year, and a chance to re-think how you can acquire new skills, and launch, advance, or change your career. Our students—including those we’ve highlighted here—have undertaken remarkable journeys in order to change their lives for the better. What will your 2018 story be?
To András, Jelena, Marc, and all of our graduates, we offer our applause for your tenacity, dedication, and passion for learning. Your decision to let us be a part of your learning journey is something we’ll always be grateful for.
