An Adventure in React

Its been a long 6 months. For context, I started a full time full stack development bootcamp 6 months ago. It was an intense, nonstop program. I learned more than I expected about React and Rails and while I’m very excited to take these skills into the real world, it was far from a straight forward process for me. I ran into more interruptions over these six months than I could’ve ever expected so to come out on top took more sleepless nights than I’d like to admit.

First, before the boot camp begun, my family had started a big home improvement project, replacing old carpet with new hardwood. This wasn’t meant to be a problem with the course as it was meant to finish before the cohort began. However, the contractors we had hired to help with the project were unable to acquire the necessary materials delaying the process several weeks into the course. This took some working around as my computer was unreachable for some time, so as a solution I simply bought a laptop to prevent myself from falling too far behind.

Shortly after, a long-term relationship I was in came to an end during the first project of the cohort. Relationships ending can take a big tole on the mind, especially when you have to put the emotions aside to focus on your future. This in the grand scheme of things was a small hiccup though to be fair, focusing became rather difficult for some time.

Finally, and most importantly, towards the middle of the course, my father discovered a large tumor placed on his spine. He is, ironically, the backbone of the house as its easy enough to say without him it would’ve fallen to the ground by now. Planning for the surgery had all of us extremely stressed and as much as I would love a job in the tech industry, my fathers health would always take the front seat in that car. At this point the course was getting much more difficult and involved so it became difficult to keep up while going in and out of the hospital rather frequently. I found myself rather far behind at some points so to combat this I would simply power through the course in the place of sleep and in the end I was successful in keeping up with the rest of the cohort. Thankfully the surgery to remove the tumor was successful and his healing process went very smoothly, so after a month or so the stress subsided and I was able to completely focus on the capstone project in which I was successfully able to create a solid template for a restaurant’s website.

There were many more hiccups I haven’t mentioned but all the same I am excited to continue on the path of full stack development and knowing I was able to stay on track with as many road blocks no matter how drastic gives me confidence that I will be able to push forward in the industry no matter what the odds against me may be.