It’s been a wild 5 months for our current cohort! 2 weeks ago, they found out where they will be going for their internships. And currently, they are tapping away at their keyboards to get their capstone projects complete. We want to take a moment to reflect on their time here and what they are looking forward to moving ahead. Below are a few of our student’s reflections on their last 5 months here:
Brenna
I was always a big nerd who liked school, so classes at Ada have been lots of fun for me. It is the most safe, supportive learning environment I’ve ever been in, all thanks to the Ada staff and my wonderful classmates. Throughout the classroom portion, I kept a weekly log of what I learned. My first week in February, I learned how to define methods in Ruby and coded a basic console calculator. By the end of April, I built an Etsy clone in a team of 3. My final week, my partner and I built a video rental app using both Ruby, a language I learned in three months, and Javascript, a language I learned one month. That is so cool and makes me feel cool!!
Also during this final week, I found out I’ll be interning at Chef, a cloud software company. I’m quite excited and nervous! The people there seem very nice and I think I’ll learn so much from them. All the same, I’m about to leave the Ada classroom bubble and jump in the deep end. It’s scary! Luckily though, I’m a great swimmer. 🙂
Emma
I knew coming into Ada that the program would be challenging and fast-paced but what I did not expect was the level of support I will get from both the instructors and staff, as well as my classmates. Everyone at ada is just exceptional, and I am so grateful for being surrounded by such an amazing group of people as I navigate through this journey.
Looking back, I am amazed at how much I’ve learned in such a short period of time, and as we are getting ready to transition to our internships I am looking forward to this new learning opportunity. I know that it will not be easy but I know that Ada has given us the tools to succeed!
Marisol
I was not prepared for Ada. I am saying that with the confidence that I believe Ada prepared me for my internship, and eventually entering the workforce. I expected that coming in with little or no knowledge would be fine, and it totally was, but it would’ve been advantageous for me to have prepared more before entering Ada. Ada is very fast-paced and there is a lot of learning you need to do on your own after class. The curriculum is phenomenal but it goes so quickly, I realized (maybe a month in) that I wasn’t absorbing and retaining all of the information that was thrown at me because of how much information there was.
I feel like I learned a lot and I’m happy where I am now, but something common that I feel we don’t talk about enough is how it can feel like you’re drowning. But that feeling is not because of inability, it’s just because you have A LOT to learn! I am really appreciative of the instruction / learning process that Ada set up for us. We not only learn the very basic stuff, like what things are and what they’re called, but the philosophies associated with different languages. It’s almost like learning an actual language, where you need to go to a country where that language is spoken to really learn the language and the culture; Ada did that for me.
In my internship, I’m looking forward to starting my real-world training as a Software Developer. I am really hopeful that it will be a really good learning experience that will allow me to learn and hone my coding skills, while teaching me the customs of my newly adopted culture. In my future, I am looking forward to forgetting that I didn’t plan to become a software developer and just doing it without an afterthought. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to get more people like myself into the field so that I can see more people like me everyday when I’m at work. I’m really excited to see where in tech I end up, because I am interested in a lot of different fields within tech, so I’m excited to see what else I get to experience.
Allison
To put it bluntly, Ada is rigorous. Though I expected going back to school would be an adjustment (particularly making the career transition from writing words to writing code), I didn’t anticipate the mental and emotional strain that would come with the full time school and project hours. In hindsight, the 5 months leading up to capstone , I not only know how to code, but feel confident calling myself a software engineer. Ada equipped me with the tools to thrive in a field that requires adaptability, precision and continuous learning.