Journey to Coding Bootcamp
We were nearing the end of our two years of living in Denmark when the world shut down due to covid. In fact, we were five days away from our flight home to D.C. when the world closed. With our flights cancelled, we scrambled to negotiate with our landlord to allow us to stay in our apartment and to contact my husbands employer to make sure he could continue to work so that we could keep our visas. Everything was uncertain for everyone. We had no idea when we would be able to fly home. Our two cats made making new flight arrangements more complicated because airlines halted all pet travel. Days, weeks, months past and like everyone else, we were glued to the news. In June of 2020, we were able to secure a flight for us and our cats from Amsterdam to New York City. We rented a car and drove nine hours from Copenhagen to Amsterdam for our long awaited journey home.
Arriving back in the States, we started the difficult process of setting up our lives again. I have so many stories of the DMV, furniture shopping, and apartment hunting in the time of covid, the least to say is that it was not easy. After some months, we were finally able to settle down in a nice apartment and then began my hunt for what to do next. For the entire time I have known my husband, he has told me that would enjoy coding. I never gave it much thought until I found myself with ample time spent indoors. I worked with a few free online courses and discovered that while coding is hard, it is also fun and rewarding. I decided to go all in and take a software engineering bootcamp. And that is how I ended up at Flatiron School.
I knew that a bootcamp was going to be intense, but wow. It is has been so much more than I expected. So many labs, and so many readMe’s to do in a night. So much information to cram into my brain. And the pace is intense. But, I have come so far. At the start of the bootcamp, I was afraid of the Command Line. I didn’t know how to make a fetch and I had no idea what Associations were. Now, I love the command line. I can not only make a fetch call, but can set up a fully functioning backend, associations and all.
One of my favorite things about Flatiron is my cohort. Everyone in my cohort is kind, helpful, and smart. I don’t think I would have made it through without them. They are always ready and willing to help with code, or listen to all the feelings, and there have been a ton of feelings. We coded a lot together, but we were also able to have some fun along the way. I will miss them when this is over. It has been a real pleasure getting to know them and growing as software engineers together. What will I do without morning standup? Or having pizza brought up on a regular basis? No more Pokemon in lectures, no more lectures! There is life outside of bootcamp, and that life is coming up fast. Am I ready for it? I guess I have to be. I hope that I will still be able to reach out to my classmates, and maybe we can keep some traditions alive. Feelings Friday anyone?
