Contract signed! — my summary of the code school application processes

So I’m going to Code Fellows in Seattle. When I started this applying to developer bootcamp fiasco over a month ago, I never thought I’d be saying this. I also never thought I’d be doing a bootcamp for both iOS and rails. 

I got the $1000 deposit loaned and signed my contract today. I have to drive 16 hours to seattle on saturday. 

Those of you following and keep up on my blog might have noticed I applied to app academy again and got further than I did the first time over a month ago. As a nice little hint, at this point in time if you want to reapply, just put a different email address on the application. I filled all my information on the second application out truthfully. I felt underrepresented the first time around. Did a lot of coding challenges in between getting denied at first and going through it again. If you decide to try and go through the application process again like I did, please, be honest with yourself. Wait a little while, work hard, improve your skills, and then apply. Give yourself time to forget their coding challenges. If you got through the coding challenges by simply remembering them, practicing them, and replicating them in order to get to the interview process, you might be setting yourself up for failure during their program. Either way, I’m sure they do an excellent job of weeding out people in the actual interview process. I only reapplied because dbc decided I was good enough, maybe app academy would this time.

In the end, between yesterday and today, I realized, even if I did get accepted into app academy, code fellows just all around seemed like a better deal to me. I don’t have to start paying till after the program. 1/3 the deposit(which was proving difficult to come up with on such short notice), I’ll be learning ios and rails in that time. they guarantee a job, cheaper than both AA and DBC, and I’ll be done with all that before AA or DBC even start. 

So in summary, I’m going to seattle, I’m gonna be sleeping in my car if/until I find a floor/couch to sleep on. 

I’ll continue progress updates. through the duration of the program. Wish me luck, being away from my daughter who is about to start walking any week now and my wife are going to be my struggling points. No one wants to watch their baby grow up on skype. 

I don’t even know if I’ve mentioned my situation. The company I was working at laid me off 4 months after my daughter, Rylee, was born. My wife, daughter, and I moved down to California into my dad’s bedroom, he now sleeps on the living room couch. We’ve been struggling to live on unemployment while I study and look for work. Now this happened. We will continue to struggle. But I’m confident that by the new year I will have a job making a decent salary and that will be able to get my family out of our rut. 

God has helped us through everything so far, and I know he will get us through any other struggles we have a long the way. At this point in time. The most money I’ve ever made in my life was $12/hr. 

Thanks for listening, If you think someone who is on a similar path as mine might be interested in reading my blog, tell them about it. I hope to be an inspiration to some. Also, please ask me any questions, I’m always happy to help. 

 

coding school updates

I applied to app academy(again) on sunday and have landed an interview! Pretty excited to see if I get accepted or not. I also had my interview with Code Fellows in Seattle today, they let me in and want me to do their iOS course and then directly after those 2 months jump right into the second half of the rails class. So it is clear to me that my passion and drive is clear to these schools.

Right now I’m just trying to get $1000 for the deposit on either Dev Bootcamp or Code Fellows and just waiting to see how the App Academy interview(s) go. If I get into App Academy I’ll have to figure out how to come up with $3000 for the deposit. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be going to Code Fellows. Their class starts next monday, that gives me about 5 days to get the deposit, and drive about 16 hours. 

So really I’m just trying to get the deposit money together and I’ll be in an iOS > rails > start up developer path starting monday! It’s all in God’s hands now, If he wants me to go to school then I’ll get the money together somehow… very quickly.

Wish me luck on it all. I’m glad to be on this learning path!