Several months ago I had to re-evaluate my career when the startup I helped co-found could no longer afford to pay me anymore. I applied for a few jobs that I felt I was qualified for, met with a few people locally here in Bozeman, hoping to feel out the prospects for a designer job. I applied for a local company that was hiring and ultimately I was passed up for the position… At the time made me feel miserable, I helped co-found a company and served as their designer and can’t even pull an interview for a graphics designer position? What do I do now?
After a week or so I put the feelers out again and a Facebook friend messaged and said would you be interested in Joining the Montana Code School to which I replied: “Heck yeah” but I do not have the money to cover tuition. She got a hold of me a few days later and said what if we could help you get the tuition covered, would you be interested in joining? Needless to say, I am now two-thirds of the way through the cohort, and I could not imagine having to learn the things that I have learned in the last eight weeks at a traditional school. I love the immersive-ness of it all. I go to sleep and dream about code now and on many occasions I will wake up in the morning and have the answer to something I was working on the night before.
Looking forward to our second projects I have a few idea’s of what I would like to work on, I would like to expand my skillset into some HTML 5 canvas animation projects and also some app development. I am excited about this new path because I have had several app ideas over the past few years but no skills to make them a reality. I now have a starting point, and I am excited about the future.
I LOVE building things with great people. That one sentence is the core of what drives me. I am in my element when I am following an idea from conception to completion with great people; that is what ultimately brings me that warm fuzzy feeling of fulfillment. Looking forward I will make sure that I keep that core value in mind while choosing my career path.
To anyone considering a boot camp, hand yourself over to the process. You will not pick up everything you need in the twelve weeks; you will feel lost the first month. You have to push through, push past the fear and don’t measure yourself against the rest of the class. Sometimes you have to come up for air and realize how much you have accomplished in such a short time; most people take years to learn a language, and you are doing it in 12 weeks.