I am dedicating my first blog to Ronan Keating because WOW, it’s been a rollercoaster!

Here I am at the end of my first week as a boot camp student at Manchester Codes. I was full of nervous, excited energy ahead of the first class on Monday night. The lecture was pretty relaxed, we were given an overview of the first four weeks of the course then sent off to break out rooms to set up our environment. The break out room was a little strange at first but I got into it quite quickly, working through the track and getting set up. The set up went fairly smoothly, I left class feeling happy and excited for the next one on Wednesday.

Our second class covered the command line interface (CLI). I’d read over a little bit of content ahead of the class so was feeling confident. We started with a lecture, I’m a complete coding beginner so some of the concepts and terminology were pretty alien, but I felt comfortable asking questions and ready to start some practice in the break out rooms.

Then it happened, the first neck jolting dive drop of the rollercoaster! I was happily working through the track when others started asking questions that I didn’t understand, they were a lot further on than me and panic quickly set in. I left class feeling anxious, everyone else seemed to be understanding and racing through the content and I was already behind.

I had a frustrating night on Thursday. I had been dying to carry on with the CLI track all day, but had to do my day job first and had a bit of a head ache by the time I started coding. Absolutely nothing was making sense, I didn’t get through to the end of the track like I’d planned, and downloading oh my zsh threw an additional spanner in the works as commands that previously worked seemed to no longer exist. I was feeling really low.

I started Friday feeling more hopeful, I was supposed to be having the evening off, but I decided the fit a couple of hours of coding in. I got to the end of the CLI track and set up for the murder mystery challenge, it wasn’t much progress but I felt back on track and ready to get my detective hat on.

Saturday was amazing! I solved the murder mystery and really enjoyed the challenge. It was tough and I had to use some hints and get help from my boyfriend (who is also learning to code) but I loved it! By the end of the day, despite feeling absolutely frazzled, I was so proud! The lows of Thursday felt like a lifetime ago.

I spent Sunday going back through CLI. I found this really helpful as it actually made sense the second time round and I made my own cheat sheet for future reference.

I have learnt A LOT in my first week! My main take away is to not compare yourself! This may be easier said than done, but everyone is at different levels in terms of their current knowledge and everyone learns at different paces.

I'm feeling all ready for another twist in the rollercoaster next week!