My long term goals or intended career pathway
My goals are to build on my existing web development skills that I gained from study at University and from building a portfolio website for my parents' hobby farm. This was 6 years ago and I have not really done any web development since then. The web development skills I was taught were also rather introductory-level and I self-taught a lot of extra skills required to host and maintain a website.
I would like to start to learn more advanced web development skills. Such that I am on track using a web development stack that is in-demand among employers. While I do not necessarily have a list of potential employers or work in mind, I think that my past experience could and investing interests suggests I may enjoy working in the fintech sector. As I have previously found great benefit in using applications like Hatch, Sharesies, and Sharesight (to name a few) and I have a strong interest in seeing these apps improve.
This would enable me to market myself to prospective employers as a web developer, as either a employee or a contractor. I am also interested in pursuing cloud computing as a speciality focus. Plus building my skills for working on hobby projects involving Home Assistant home automation (IoT).
My strengths and limitations in learning
I have an education history of dealing with complex subject matters. This gives me the confidence to take on educational challenges that may otherwise be too intimidating.
However, I am not an ideal student as I am easily distracted. Even when doing the work I have a tendency to go down a "rabbit hole" either trying to understand something that is not in the scope of the current task, implementing unnecessary features/functions, or going completely off-task.
I do however find that programming and IT tasks are a bit of an exception to this. I can find myself getting engaged in these projects and when things get challenging rather than finding myself frustrated, I tend to enjoy the challenge and problem-solving process.
This can be a bit of a strength at times as I have a well-developed skillset when it comes to research, writing, and a lot of generalised skills and knowledge.
Biggest non-technical challenge at Bootcamp
Foundations has prepared me for nine weeks of education, so I think I will be able to transition into rather intensely focused study.
I think that a challenge for me will be managing my schedule while on a student budget. As I cannot easily "buy" my time back and a lot of my day will go into commuting to Dev Academy, participating in a full day at Dev Academy, then finding time to workout and exercise.
Non-technical skills I would like to develop while at Dev Academy
I would like to develop the ability to work in a team in a tech development environment. Often it is a lot easier to not have to rely on anyone else and take on everything myself. As that way I do not have to communicate or coordinate with others.
To date a lot of my educational, employment, and hobbies have all been solo endeavours for the most part. These did not demand a lot of coordination or communication with other people as part of a partnership, small team, or larger organisation.
The ideal web developer should be both able to work independently as part of a team or a project. So ideally I improve at these non-technical skills.
My expectations from the Bootcamp and the team
This is a tricky thing to consider. I am confident that they will provide a supportive learning environment. I think the workload will be fair, even given the intense nature of this part of the course, and Core content will be treated appopriately as my understanding is that this is "invitational" so we can opt-out if we choose.
I will continue to manage my workload similar to how I did during the Foundations course (outlined below), although I am expecting my days to be more fully-booked.
How I will manage my workload through Dev Academy
I will work around a standard working day (Mon-Fri) between 8:30 am and 5 pm.
I will conduct myself in a professional manner during working hours and when I am interacting with Dev Academy students and staff. I will also be mindful of when I may be viewed as being a representative of Dev Academy in public online and offline.
When tasks start to build up I will attempt to manage them by:
- Communicating with the group through Discord or Slack.
- Blocking out time to focus on a task.
- Seeking online resources to help me solve the task.
- Requesting intervention Dev Academy facilitators to help me solve persistent issues.
How and where I will seek help
I will seek help first through course resources, appliable documentation, and online Q&A archives (e.g. StackOverflow).
I will then seek help from my homegroup and homegroup facilitators. I could also seek help from the Dev Academy community/cohort.
What I expect from Dev Academy Facilitators
I expect from the Facilitation team to:
- Be able to provide me with a clear and concise explanation of the task and the steps I need to take to complete it.
- Clarify any misunderstandings.
- Guide me through the learning and problem-solving process when I am stuck.
Scheduling information
I will be unavailable for scheduling through the following:
- Outside of ordinary working hours of 8:30 am to 6:30 pm, Monday to Friday, I am unavailable.
- I workout at the gym Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. This may take up to 2 hours (travel, workout, shower). My start time for going to the gym is 1:30 pm till as late as 3:30 pm. However I am flexible with this timing and can delay this to work on a task through the early afternoon or postpone my workout till the evening.
- On Wednesday I go for a run. This takes me around an hour. As I run outside through a reserve this must be before 3pm, 5pm at the very latest, otherwise it becomes colder and darker as the sun sets.
- In general the weekends are not workdays and I am unavailable. If I am working through the weekend however, then I will again be going for a run, and will be unavailable for a similar block of time to Wednesday.