I have lived to tell about the first two weeks of Boot Camp. Now that I am on the other side, it's interesting to look back and consider all the things I thought preparing to enter the boot camp and even those things I was thinking on the first day.

If I was to go back in time and talk to my past self, the first thing I would say is, ignore everything you're reading about what it is going to be like. At least the first two weeks because it's not any of that. (at all!)

The Reality of Boot Camp

• You will want to get up earlier than you think you need to and that still probably will not be early enough. (note writing, reviewing content and practicing what you're learning.

• You're life will be on hold for 12 weeks because you will be BUSY. You're basically chained to a computer 6 hours a day with lots of five minute breaks and an hour for lunch. Food prep and freezing is a life saver. SLEEP is important and maybe even key to mentally surviving.

• Make code snippet notes right in your code editor. Code and comment between the code, add in what the code is for and what it does. Space it out so it's easy to read and find at a glance. This is great for finding things quickly when working on projects. Start this on your first day. (I wish I had thought if it on day one instead of in week 2!)

• Spend at least 30 minutes reviewing daily content. It will help it all sink in and hopefully prevent overwhelm.

• Network: Find support. This is a difficult one. I am still struggling because I have a lack of support and it's not always easy to find. Coders are usually introverts. Boot Camps use claims about friendships and building relationships in their marketing and it's easy to fall for that. But the reality can be very different. I've seen a lot of that early on. Two weeks in and we have a very quiet slack channel. I connected with classmates early on, on Linkedin because that was part of the class. But there's no real relationship building going on with this cohort. You may have to go out of the bootcamp to find that support.

Self Learning Boot Camp Style

The first two weeks and your first two projects, is a lot of self learning (which you can do with out paying a ton of money!) There are lectures sprinkled in there but for the first two weeks a lot of them are the online cohort and the in person cohort in one. The in person cohort is also self learning online the first two weeks.

There good thing are periods of open time where you can log into the zoom and ask questions. But they're run mostly by TA's and not teachers. Our TA's graduated the last cohort. So they have no real world code experience which has turned out to be a hilarious experience.

I code things that appear on more than one page in my global css page because I do not like having to repeat myself, it is time consuming and boring. Plus they have been drilling D.R.Y. into our brains. One TA agrees with me, the other thinks I'm wrong and should just repeat my code. Needless to say I can always tell which TA is grading me. It's definitely affected the bootcamp as a whole for me.

But it's not just that, that bothers me. I can not tell you how hard it is to learn from a lecture where the presenter is googling how to code something because their demo isn't working. Those lectures I learn almost nothing. Lectures are hard enough because the code flies so fast you do not have time to get it all down most of the time so you're already behind. But then to have the demos not work. It's tough. I am thankful all the code is released after the demo but I almost wish they would send it out before hand so that we could have it on a side window to grab patches of as we code along when we miss things.

I know, assisted learning was the way to go for me because I needed something more than I could get online but I have found myself wondering if there is a better way than bootcamps. It's a lot more of a mixed bag than I expected it to be.

I've been thinking about my capstone, in between panicking that I am going to end up not passing this bootcamp. Wondering what I can come up with and I find myself stuck choosing between two.

Coding and Learning Styles

They say to come in with a problem and then use that to learn. Well, I have problem and it's that I don't think the way a lot of people teach coding is the way a lot of people learn. There has to be another way. At least for those people.

What is the way for those people? For people like me that feel overwhelmed? I've been doing virtual learning since before covid so that is the easy part of all this. I know, it's not following a tutorial. I took in a little from doing all those before the boot camp but the lack of interaction didn't work for me. Plus, a lot of them were outdated and finding fixes was not always easy.

I actually found some of the best tools were things that helped me learn differently.

Apps, like mimo - where there are fill in the blanks, drag and drop code etc. Allow me to look at and manipulate code, move it around and see how it looks while choosing the right code. I also got to write code so I knew it was sinking in because I could write it and get it right.

But bootcamp has none of that. It's write code, and google what you don't know if the lectures or notes don't cover it clear enough. The problem with googling it when you're new is sometimes, (or most times!) MDN is not the clearest either. Plus, as much as the code examples are great it doesn't answer the question of why it's done this way.

Honestly, Bootcamp has been a lot of showing us one way then saying but don't do it this way. Then showing us the way they want us to do it. As much as I can see the logic in that at times, I feel like since time is an issue, they should focus on reviewing the right way more and explaining why we do it that way instead of showing us outdated ways. Focus on efficient time use when we have so little of it.

If I was to go back and do things differently, would I do things differently?

YES! I may have kept my first date that I had planned to take the boot camp instead of starting earlier and just tried to master more of the content before starting. Or at least gotten more comfortable with the first two weeks content before starting.

They say the first two weeks is HTML and CSS but there are things like SASS in there, Git, Terminal and animations. Which is a lot that I hadn't realized.

When it's all coming at you in slides and you're trying to get notes to have for yourself when you're working it adds up. There's hours of content every day just in those slides. I almost feel like they would serve us better mailing out a cohort textbook of sorts with all the slides and notes so we have them and can skip the writing notes part and highlight and add notes in there as needed. Then we can focus on the learning and coding.

Part of the problem or maybe the bulk of it, is the mindset of those who open the bootcamps. This one (and maybe all of them, who knows) is owned by a cooperation and that cooperation focuses on building websites for people. They seem to be thinking about the bootcamp as another business to bring money in and it's never really about teaching to code, or about the people.

When you think of something like a business and not about the people or about teaching to code because you're passionate about code, I think it loses a lot of important things and really changes the feeling that the people that come into your program have.

I think in this case, some of that may of trickled down. It's not to say the teachers and staff aren't fabulous people, they are. But so many have said they don't code now they teach or they don't really have time to work on their own stuff anymore because they teach. They're great people yes, but I am not sure sometimes, if they're going to be the best teachers especially for people who may not learn as quickly.

I have ten weeks left of my bootcamp. The last two weeks are for my capstone. Wish me luck. The anxiety and imposter syndrome are very real.