I remember discovering Le Wagon on social media through a blogger I was following at the time. I’m extremely pleased I found it, because Le Wagon Istanbul was a life changing experience that could help me to change my career as well. It was intense, friendly and rewarding!
Finding Le Wagon came at the right time for me. I wanted to learn how to code so that I could improve my work-life balance, and especially so I could work from home. At the time I was working long hours in the hospitality industry, and I felt it was time to make a change.
The choice of bootcamp format for me was perfect, because all the other courses I saw took way too much time…and I wanted to learn quickly. After graduating, looking back, I think I made great progress.
At first it was very hard, but over time I grew more confident and my skills started to really improve. The progress was 10x better than learning online by myself.
I was remote for almost the whole bootcamp, which is why the buddy-system of paired-programming was even more important for me. It was hard at first, but it was really helpful to be able to interact with the other students.
I learned how to help them when they were stuck, and in return they helped me. Team-work was especially important during Project Weeks (when we built a new web app together). I met amazing team-mates and learned a lot from their analytical skills.
Projects Weeks were the highlight for me and I’ll miss them the most. It was really exciting having the freedom to solve problems by ourselves and code real solutions in a real web app. This is when my confidence grew the most, we were really gelling as a team.
Throughout the bootcamp we had weekly webinars. Hearing from alumni from previous batches was crucial because they went through the same challenges as us and it was great to learn from their experiences. Also, we met a lot of professionals in the tech industry who were willing to share secrets with us.
I’m an amateur artist who loves to draw, and I always analyze other works of art, to figure out what skills I can absorb. Now that I’ve graduated, I find I do the same with websites. I’m constantly on the lookout for cool features.
Since graduating I’ve made use of Le Wagon’s amazing global community to reach out to alumni in different cities and brainstorm about their progress. It’s really exciting to be able to connect with other people internationally, especially in London where I’m looking for a job.
Career Week – in Week 10 – was very helpful in terms of employment, because we received a ton of information, informing us on the different kinds of jobs out there and how to prepare for interviews. It gave me more confidence!
Now I’ve learned how to search for answers, how to code independently and I’ve developed my skills to such an extent that I feel confident I can keep learning and improving by myself using what I learned at Le Wagon.
I’ve decided I’m really interested in CSS, which is much more powerful than I had previously thought. CSS animation is especially inspiring, and I want to continue to improve my Javascipt so I can become a frond-end designer!
