| | | After casually spending some time learning Javascript on and off on my own I realized I could really propel my learning through a bootcamp. After researching various programs, I settled on RefactorU because of their curriculum, location, and promise to still allow for balance in your life. Ten weeks may not seem like a long time, but it is a long time to learn an incredible amount of material and despite the truth behind maintaining balance in your life during the program, it is still a very intense 10 weeks. As you may imagine, you get out what you put into it and therefore I chose to put in a lot of extra time as did the instructors too - they were regularly available on nights and weekends.
Yes we learned the MEAN stack and yes I can create things using technologies that I never even knew existed before, but as you probably already know about web development, it changes constantly. You cannot stop learning or else you'll just fall behind, so the most valuable skill I will learned at RefactorU is how to learn. It's impossible to know everything, but knowing how to figure out something new or solving a problem is basically what coding is about from my perspective and RefactorU definitely gave me the confidence to do that.
As far as jobs go, people won't hand you one just because you attended a bootcamp - you have to add value and show interest in your work. There is a great, supportive coding community in Boulder, in which RefactorU is heavily involved. Keep in mind, it's in their best interest for you to get a job (more job placement = more future students), so I found that they really were willing to help in any way possible.
Overall my advice would be to attend RefactorU. If you put in the time and effort, it can totally change your career path and therefore probably your life. I met a ton of great people, learned a lot and despite working really hard for 10 weeks straight, I had a lot of fun. |
