10 Things I Wish I Knew Before Coding Bootcamp

how's it going guys Johnson here with another video I know it's been a long time since I made my last one and I promised that I would start making videos more often of course like many youtubers I feel them I promise regardless I'm trying anyways so a lot of things have happened in the last few months for one I graduated my boot camp and completed my full stack development certification yes it was a hard thing I'll be honest like who it was it was a whole lot it was definitely a tough course one of the toughest classes were taken in fact I think that it was harder than every other year of school I've ever done and that's what MIT taking multiple classes versus just one and the reason why I say that is because of the sheer workload for those of you that don't know I decided to take my coding boot camp at the University of North Carolina my instructor was Jeff Hoffman he's a great guy shouted Jeff one of the best instructors I've had in a long time UNC Charlotte was offering the boot camp nearby it was somewhere local for me and I was easy to do they offered two courses they offered a full-time in a part-time I just have to take the full-time course because I wanted to get it done as soon as possible and for some reason that happened to be a glutton for punishment they already recommend that you don't work while you take one of these courses by the time I was working part time and luckily my manager was flexible enough with me to be able to schedule around my coursework and the time that I needed to be in class however I don't recommend doing that now that I've graduated and as I reflect and look back on things there are some things that I was shown at Anu before I took the course and that's the topic of this video today I wanted to talk about the top ten things I wish that I knew before taking my coding boot camp number one the boot camp is tough consistently the reason why I say that is I've always considered myself a fast learner I've always picked up things fairly quickly and had no issues wanting new skills or trades but in this case I wasn't prepared for the level of coursework that I had to do that's not to say that I underestimated the level of work they don't have to put into the course however the work itself challenged me a lot more than I expected so if there's something that could have told myself I definitely would've told myself to expect some challenges and to meet them head-on the boot camp isn't something that was going to fly by really easily it's not something that was going to that was gonna skate through like it did most of my courses in high school and in college this was something that was going to challenge me in ways that I didn't expect but it was definitely worth it in the end number two balancing the full-time class in my case or even a fourth with the job makes the course even harder naturally you'd think that automatically having a balanced course work with your work schedule however for me I did not expect the amount of coursework that would have they talked to you in the beginning when you speak to the recruiter about how much work they expect you to put in outside of class they start off with telling you they expect you to spend twenty hours outside of class coding and that's on homework side projects practicing reviewing anything like that for me of course I didn't put anywhere near that not on a consistent basis at least I took the full-time course which required me to be in its class from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and then after that my samanage were always scheduled me either from 3:30 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. up to 8:30 p.m. when they were at the store closed so I wasn't used to sort of shifts at work but of course with shortest shifts to make sure that I had to no matter how I was getting before I had to work more days so I didn't really have any days off and if I did it was pot like one every two weeks balancing that kind of work is gonna take a toll on your body lack of sleep it's not gonna help so make sure that you if you're thinking about taking a course like this any bootcamp not even just the coding one and your thing about working while you're doing it that you expect to have a game plan for managing your time because it's one of the most important things it's gonna help you persevere through challenges you may face throughout the course number three study time is seriously important I completely underestimated this in the end of the course I walked in with a little bit experience with HTML and CSS having freelance for a couple years and building side websites and small projects for individuals or small businesses I've had some exposure to it so when we started picking up and kind of diving more into it what everybody else was kind of lost about what a div tag was or P tag or things like that I kind of had some familiarity with it begin with you may have some acuity if you take in free coding courses or if you've seen it before regardless if you have or not studies time is very important the amount of time you spend out of class it's really gonna determine how easy or how tough the course is going forward obviously the more you practice the more familiar to get with things and the easier it is to write or read or the prep put to practice the things that you've learned in the class and you will learn a lot very consistently it help for us when we had our hurricane in the middle of our course that wiped out an entire week that made things even tougher when the full-time course is already slammed packed with information and constantly moving so you might experience a similar situation and what you'll realize that every day you're learning something new so you got to make sure that you put in the work outside of class to try and to try and review and make sure you really get a grasp on the things you've learned because otherwise it's just gonna make these a little harder going forward when you haven't caught up one of the things you've already passed for me number four is not everybody's gonna make it through the course I didn't realize it at first but when out in the begin of course you know every new environment whatever they usually try and do icebreakers where you get to know everybody in your class so of course they went around introduced everyone and had everybody talk about themselves we probably started the class off with about 30 people walking was 27 or 30 people writing the course I think we had less than 18 almost half the people had dropped out in the middle of the course and they and this happened throughout the course from the beginning to the end to the very last week and that's something that is expected in these types of environments that are highly rigorous fast paced and sometimes more than what people can handle so don't expect everybody to make it through with you but also don't use that as discouragement to think that you can't handle it if you're really serious about taking a course like this being a coding boot camp or any boot camp for that for that matter as long as you're serious about it and you believe in yourself that she this is something that you want you can chase it and I believe that you can make it through that was something else tough for me through the middle of the course a lot of times I felt like I didn't know what's going on and that's something I'll talk about them later on in the video but that was something that I had recognized is that when I looked up in the middle of course and it's like five ten people disappeared you're like whoa they dropped all his money on this course and they just quit so make sure you're serious about doing it if you're thinking about taking this course because a lot of times it requires some type of serious investment I had to take out a loan for mine and I wanted to make sure that wasn't in vain so for me number five is that you're constantly gonna feel like you don't know what's going on and relax that's normal all right so number six is that during the course you may get a little depressed and I don't mean that like in the sense of the course is terrible make you feel bad about yourself but I noticed during my experience at certain points because I'm somebody who's very prideful and being able to take up new skills and learn things quickly whenever I found that I've felt like I didn't know what's going on it may be a little upset with myself because I feel like there was something wrong with my learning style that kept me at a disadvantage compared to the rest of my cohort however after talking to some of my classmates and the TAS and my instructor and everybody reassures you that everyone feels that way not everybody expresses it but everybody feels like they're behind and that's normal as long as you keep at it with the course you spend your time you're studying and you make sure you ask the questions necessary to make sure you understand you'll do fine and that's something that I had to learn and to continue on with that number seven is to make sure you utilize your TAS and your instructors these guys have a lot of knowledge especially TAS as they gone through the course as a student their structure obviously is a wealth of mental knowledge but of course as an instructor they may be answering a lot of questions already so they may not always be readily available however TAS usually I had more than one in my class we usually at least had two on board we had up to four at one point but they always provided some useful information or at least a good starting point whenever you were stuck or if they couldn't figure it out of course through the phrase the instructor but a lot of times they saved me a lot of wasted time trying to figure out a bug or a problem just by taking the time to ask a question so make sure if you have to Gay's available that you use them whenever possible because it's so much better to suck it up and ask a question especially if you're stuck then spending way too long trying to figure it out yourself and wasting a lot of time when you already are in a time like a jam-packed course that uses every minute because every one counts and it continued on with that number eight is don't be afraid to ask questions for me it was at one point in the course towards the middle toward the end where I started feeling really bad because I felt like I was asking questions too often and I spoke to one of my TAS about this I was like hey you know it seems like I'm the only person asking questions and they assured me that hey make sure you don't stop because chances are you're helping your student your fellow cohort as well because they may be too afraid to ask you a question for me at first I felt hesitant but when I thought about how much money I spent on the course and how serious was about it I want to make sure I've maximized every opportunity I had to make sure I fully understood and reaped as many benefits that I could from taking this course so I sucked it up and asked the questions and at one point I even message to my classmates like hey I know I'm stopping the teacher every now and then don't mind me and I got a lot of positive responses saying that I was asking questions that they didn't even know they had that really helped him out so make sure that if you're in a position which you don't understand something take the time out to figure it out or to ask the question so that way you get everything that you need you don't fall too far behind it's okay to be a little behind because you'll always kind of feel that way but make sure you don't fall too far behind in which you feel like you don't have the opportunity to catch up number 9 is that you're going to compare yourself to your cohort this is natural and especially for me as a comparative person I'm always comparing myself to people around me it's not a good habit I don't recommend picking it up if you don't do it but it's natural that you may look at some of the fellow developers and a lot of people may come in with experience I had half my class come in with some sort of coding experience and people were already worked in the industry I had this one guy who paid the money just because he was a scrum master I wanted to figure out what it was more like to be a developer so you could do a better job leading I had other students who came in with no coding experience at all and it was just trying it out on a whim so don't feel bad if you notice other students are picking things up faster than you chances are they had a little bit of experience with it or something's familiar or recognizable to them it doesn't mean that you're doing poorly as long as you're trying your best when you're making sure you're asking the questions to figure out how to understand the material for yourself you're gonna do fine in the course alright guys lastly number 10 make sure you reward yourself I feel like that's something I didn't do too often while I was in the course but when I look back on things I feel like it would have helped the course was typically split up into three segments in the beginning I had my introduction to the front end side of things in which you learned HTML CSS basic JavaScript node and a couple of the technologies that help build things that the user sees in the front of a website or application things like that after that we went into the backend side of things and then finally we worked in the advanced back end which included using different JavaScript frameworks like react angular using databases like my sequel and open to the point where we completed our last project so for me the milestones were the projects cuz we had three projects in the entire course I think it's really important that as a student that you rewards yourself as progress through the milestones of the course if you got if you got to break it up based on the amount of time it takes and dividing it by three by two by five whatever works for you just make sure you give yourself some type of reinforcement for just sticking it through a lot of people can't even stick through they don't want to put in the effort they get tired they give up and they quit just for not quitting that means something and they even if you start feeling like you're catching on or maybe you got stuck on something for a while then you figured it out on yourself or you had a key work with a classmate and completed a bug things like that they're worth rewarding yourself for for me I rewarded myself often by buying a coffee or an energy drink that I liked or even if you was just buying a nice meal little things it doesn't have to be anything grand or it's just anything kind of helps to make sure you reinforce yourself as you're continuing because it's going to be tough but as long as you keep with it and you persevere through it you're gonna come out on top you're gonna complete the course and you'll be glad that you did well guys I really hope you enjoyed this video I hope I gave some insight as to what I wish I would have known before I set the course I think was a great course and I'm really happy that I did take it and I hope that these videos helped either people who are currently in the course and of course similar to this or even thinking about taking a course like this because stuff like this is daunting especially if you're starting out as an adult or starting out in a career or even want to change careers taking a risk like this can be an uncomfortable experience so I hope that these videos kind of provide some insight and help you feel more comfortable with every decision you guys try to make but for anything thanks for watching I'm gonna make some more videos pretty soon probably some more information as to what I learned in the course and what I'm doing now that I've graduated so keep an eye out for those like and subscribe and let me know what else you want to see Thanks

Channel: Joel Ramirez

Views: 213,452

Keywords: coding, bootcamp, uncc, UNC, 10 thing i wish i knew, joxel, javascript, html, full stack, web, developer

Id: MffdAFJN-DA

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 30 2018