A Few Reasons why I’m Attending Flatiron School
To be completely honest…I’m attending Flatiron School because I believe the skillset developed and learned through the curriculum will (hopefully) lead to a comfy, cushy job that I won’t hopefully end up regretting in the future!
On a more serious note, I’ve lived in the Bay area my entire life, and I’ve grown accustomed to hearing about programming, software engineering, software development, and of course, about the big tech companies that currently dominate the tech bubble here in the Bay. I’m no stranger to hearing about boot camps and the way they set you up to land a job within a nice tech company.
Why
After graduating college in 2018, I wasn’t entirely too sure what I wanted to do with my career. After a few months of living at home, I ended up being hired at Twitter for an Ad Operations Specialist role, where I would be assisting our Sales team with any and all sales-related requests. When I first started working there I definitely thought, “This is it. I’ve found the role that I will stick with, and put in a few years until I can land a manager-level role either at Twitter or somewhere else.” Clearly that plan did not end up working out for me, and I quickly realized that being within the sphere of ads and sales was not the right spot for me. Once I moved to San Francisco and started working, I had my biggest moment of clarification — I truly and only wanted a nice job so I could afford to live by myself. It sounds like a pretty selfish goal, and it definitely is, but it at least helped me focus on developing my career to the point where I’d be able to afford to do so.
Roommates are pretty much a must in San Francisco, and I’ve had my fair share of annoying, gross, and downright insane roommates. I’ve lived in 3–4 neighborhoods in SF, and I can honestly say that the only reason I would like a cushy job (hopefully) is to ensure that I never have to deal with anyone else — being truly alone in my own place of relaxation is my short-term goal. I don’t like how normalized it is to live with roommates, and if it means joining the corporate, tech world to get out of it, then I am more than happy to do so. I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy programming and development — it is a genuinely entertaining process that I can see myself building a career out of.
In 2020, during early quarantine, I was told to look into boot camps and why they seem to be so successful. After doing a bit of research, I decided to take a free JavaScript course that would act as a pre-boot camp beginner course. I ended up thoroughly enjoying the class and decided that I would ultimately (eventually) sign up for a boot camp and start the push towards such a massive career change. After an extremely busy fall, I managed to barely squeak by and finish the pre-work the weekend before the cohort was starting, and I couldn’t be happier. It has been an experience absorbing the amount of information that gets pounded into your head, but at the same time it is very comforting knowing that I’m not alone in this experience.
While I can recognize that my “Why” might not necessarily be the most traditional reason someone might take up a boot camp (or maybe it is?), it has still been a great factor in forcing me to continue this rigorous course. Every time I feel myself slipping away and considering just why I’m even in this intense class, I remember that I will hopefully be able to build a future for myself where I can truly be my most introverted self. I’m extremely looking forward to the job-application process and also for the apartment-hunting process in the near future ;)
