I cannot believe I am at this point in the Flatiron curriculum already! 10 months have flown by and I am submitting my final project and writing my final, required, blog post (I’ll continue blogging after graduation). During our orientation, the class was warned that we will go through a rollercoaster of emotions during these 10 months. Little did I know that every phase would bring its own ups and downs, but thankfully Flatiron provides a safe, welcoming environment that offers students the opportunity to learn, ask questions and, most importantly, support one another.
Back in March of 2020, I was one of millions to be let go from my job in the fashion industry due to closures from Covid -19. From March-June 2020 there was a lot of uncertainty regarding that industry and how the market would rebound after long closures. A lot of my former clients closed their stores permanently and others couldn’t buy the same inventory levels as pre-pandemic.
Prior to the pandemic, I began to research how to code and the different programming languages that were being used, however I had no experience. I didn’t know the difference between front-end and back-end, how to setup my environment, or even how to use a terminal. I bought an online course that I quickly quit because I was getting frustrated not knowing how to perform the simplest tasks.
Fast forward to the summer of 2020. I had been out of work since March and hiring in the fashion industry was very slow. I began to look into free programming apps and websites such as Mimo and freecodecamp.org. These provided as easier step by step approach and I began to have some fun coding and felt that I would really enjoy doing this full time. Now, Fall 2020, I spoke with some friends in the tech industry and did a lot of research regarding software engineering bootcamps, and Flatiron always came up as a top choice. I decided to take the leap and join a formal curriculum, and so I was accepted into the full-time program starting December 2020.
December 2020 arrives and I’m nervous, but excited to start the bootcamp. In 5 months, I’ll graduate and be on my way to starting a new career…not so fast. Since I didn’t have any experience in the industry, I really didn’t understand how intense the full time program would be and unfortunately had to withdraw after only two weeks. At this point, I had two options, quit entirely and try to find a new job back in fashion, or transfer to a part time cohort which wouldn’t start until February 2020 and last 10 months. I really wanted to quit and go back to the safe career and something I was comfortable doing (having worked in the fashion industry for almost 10 years), but instead decided to transfer to the part time cohort.
When February 2021 showed up, I was beyond excited and ready to begin the journey. I had unbelievably supportive cohort leads and a great class that was always willing to help a fellow student. Starting with a CLI project, moving to Sinatra, then Rails and finally JavaScript and React/Redux, we all had our good days and bad, but we always told each other that we would finish and stick with the process.
Here we are now at the end of one chapter, and at the beginning of an exciting new one. I can’t thank the Flatiron community enough for believing in me and giving me the opportunity to change careers in my 30s. I always thought that I wasn’t smart enough or too old to learn programming, but with the help and support of great people, anything is possible.
