Christine: “Learning to code at Le Wagon changed my life”

"Hi, I’m Christine, I'm 28 years old. I was born in the south of Germany and for the past seven years, I have lived in Barcelona where I studied political sciences and had my own little fashion rental startup. Before moving to Australia, I was working for a shared machine shop (a co-working space for carpenters, designers, etc.) where I was mainly responsible for marketing and communications."

"I participated in a day-long workshop for women at Le Wagon Barcelona where I came into contact with actual coding for the first time. I really loved the building and breaking aspect that comes with coding and the fact that you can build amazing products with 'just' your laptop, from anywhere in the world really. After the workshop, I started some online courses and after a couple of months, I realized that coding was actually something I really enjoyed. I wanted to explore it more, with a possible career change in the future. In April 2019, I moved to Melbourne, set up my new life here and decided to join Le Wagon there."

"It might sound cheesy, but learning to code at Le Wagon really changed my life. The community is great and the tools I’ve learned to use have really helped me to get my foot down in this new world that coding still is to me. It gave me the necessary confidence to keep learning and pushing. At the end of the 9 weeks, I left the course with a great repertoire of new knowledge and a whole bunch of new friends."

"After I graduated in September 2019, I dedicated the first few months to look for a job in the field and the months thereafter were filled with interviews. I picked out a couple of graduate programs at companies that I could see myself working at... Out of 3 grad programs, I got accepted into two, which I was pretty stoked about. So I’m really happy that I’ll be starting as a new grad in February 2020! For the last two weeks of January 2020, I was also working as a Teacher Assistant at Le Wagon Melbourne, which I would definitely recommend to any alumni as teaching somebody else is a really great way of testing your own knowledge."

"What helped me a lot was reaching out to alumni on LinkedIn, ask them about their experience and see what they have been up to since they finished the bootcamp. I also think it is important that you choose a good time for the bootcamp. It is really intense and I wouldn’t recommend having much else going on during those 9 weeks, so you can fully dive in and make the most of it!"