I failed... mostly myself, and my family, and I feel very low about this situation. I'm just going to go through it in some detail; so a lot of words to follow.
Bootcamp was hard, and I knew it was going to be hard going in. What I didn't fully grasp was the way in which it was going to be hard. I'm sure you've heard that the best way to learn a foreign language is to be fully immersed so that your only hope of communicating is problem solving the little things to build comprehension towards the larger things. This is what Bootcamp was - with nearly no instruction, we were given hours of work to problem solve... using Google, and various JavaScript instruction sites that exist. I finished my first week of work Sunday morning, and was helping my peers in the final minutes before class on Monday when all of the work was due. Please understand, while class is only 3 hours, I was spending an additional 8-10 hours working on the assignments, and then experienced anxiety-filled dreams for the 5-6 hours I gave myself to sleep. There was little to assume other than that this was an intentional effort, designed to push the students to their wall.
By Saturday evening, I felt so defeated that I wanted to quit. Come Sunday afternoon, I felt that high of digging my way out of this work and left myself a few hours to decompress. Monday morning, our first test, and I barely passed. Then came the 30-minute lecture about very general topics we learned in Prep, and then we got paired up for the first time. We had an odd number of students and I landed in a group of 3. My two partners, we're skilled problem solvers and had already cemented the knowledge of what code to use and when, and we flew through the assignment. I kept up for about a 1/3 of the way, and then the problems got challenging. I spent the remaining 2/3 of my journey through the assignment being dragged behind a speeding car. This meant I was ahead a full day now, and I could study the code they used to solve our problems, but I learn best when I am involved in the solution, not just simply "taking notes". This experience wasn't great but my partners were accommodating and explained code to me that I didn't understand; all in all - it really wasn't terrible. More than anything, the reality of where I was in comparison to at least these two peers was striking and unnerving.
Tuesday came and went and I was still in decent shape, again, thanks to the blistering expediency with which Monday was tackled.
Wednesday arrived. Lecture time. I have to say this here, because I failed to acknowledge it in my exit interview. These lectures, I still don't understand what they were for. One could only classify them as instructional, if somehow you had forgotten everything you learned in Prep - and if that was true, you would be so buried at this point that you'd never possibly catch up. Very little of these lectures provided new material, at least not until (my) final two days; and again, they are not what I would classify as something instructive that you could refer to in order to solve your assigned work. The best analogy I could give you is: I've taught you arithmetic, and your homework is calculus. Or maybe: this is how an oven works, please bake a chocolate soufflé.
After the lecture, we were assigned new partners, and sent to our work chambers where we could commiserate about code. My partner immediately informs me, he's already completed the assignment, and is working on next week's assignments, and to let him know if I needed help with anything. Fuck me. I stare at the code, slowly piecing it together in tethers, and when I did ask him for insight, he would simply say, "I was over-thinking it", or "it's pretty straight-forward". Oh - of course, why didn't I think of that?!
The peers that I knew were struggling such as myself had lucked out and been assigned partners, the kind of partners you might find in the definition of "partner". Suddenly, I felt isolated and alienated and frighteningly behind. For two days, I stared at code, trying every combination of syntax I knew, and many that I didn't, and still couldn't fight my way through the assignments. As the weekend approached, my desperation grew and my resolve faded. We were explicitly instructed that if we reached out to Help Desk for assistance, that we had to do so with our partner. What sense did that make? My partner was already done... so I was going to ask him to take time out of his day to meet up with me so I could ask for help on Help Desk?! Nope. That's nonsense.
Monday came and after bombing the test, and my third partner being a no-show to the collaboration room, my ambition crumbled. On Tuesday, I reached out to the admin and we conducted an exit-interview.
My biggest hurdle was the partnering. If we were in a class environment, my partners couldn't drag me through the code, or dip out on me. It would have been an entirely different experience. But reality is, I am either not equipped to learn something so foreign virtually, or I simply need to learn with more instruction and at a slower pace. Coding Bootcamp is for hardcore problem solvers, and fast learners. The amount of work is a LOT, and you will need to build on everything you learn to help you tackle the next assignment. Memorization isn't going to save you - understanding what code to use to solve your problem is paramount in achieving success. Everything you were warned about in Bootcamp is real - and not sugar-coated in the slightest. Also - understand that if you are struggling, there is help, but in a virtual environment, that comes with significant challenges, and your partner may not be a resource you can rely on. In the end, I don't feel any ill-will towards the course, my failure really boiled down to my inability to keep up and solve my problems. Which, is why this feels so humbling and profoundly disappointing.
So, what now? I really don't know. I've reached out to people I know that know a lot of people. I've told the landlord my situation, and she's already sent my resume out to several people. I'm starting over somewhere, hopefully soon, and hopefully it's sound and will last. The Federal bump in unemployment stops at the end of the month; I'm still waiting on my fucking refund from PayFlex, and I've requested my IRA be closed and the funds sent to me. We are at event horizon here and I need something to pan out. I know this feeling, I've talked about it before... I'm a failure to myself and my family feeling.
I need some light -
No comments:
Post a Comment