Coming into this program, I truly did not know what to expect. I was not aware of the level of experience others were coming in with. The only thing I did prior to applying was research and light study of HTML, CSS, and JS.
This helped me understand the bootcamp process and the different goals that they have. When I first did my reasearch I thought that all bootcamps were the same: they teach you code in a crazy amount of time then you get a job. However, after doing months of reasearch, applying to various programs, and speaking with developers in the indeustry, came to the conclusion that bootcamps actually have a bad reputation in the indeustry. a lot gf people come out of these programs severlly nderprepared and have a vast dearth in their programming knowledge. Fortunatly, galvanize stood out in this regard. After going to an info session and learning a bit about the progrm, I was hooked.
Several things attracted me to Galvanize: a 6 month program instead of a 3 month one, more things that are taught, a community of working developers, not just studetns.
#####6 months
Because this program is twice as long as most immersion programs, you innevitably have more time to retain the information that is taught. There will be days where you are spending 12 hours in the classroom, in lecture and working on a big project.
However, this should not be happeing everyday. Talking to a few friends who went to 3 month long programs, 12 hour days were a standard that all students obided by. The issue with this philosophy is taht the ammount of time you spend in front of your laptop is not correlated to the information you retian. After a certain period of time, your brain will simply shut down and you will be too tired to learn.
Nearly all bootcamps teach you JS, Ruby, and a few frameworks. Hack reactor is the only one which teaches you the mean stack(Mongo, express, angular, and node).
Galvanize teaches all of this, and they are able to because of the length of the program as well as their teaching style. Additioanlly, learning more technologies as a developer will inevitablly make you more appealing to potental employers.
The start of the program typically consists of a lot of lecture, but after some time you are given days where you work on an assignment or project throughtout the day. This process allows you to internalize what ever it is you've learned throught the course.
Not only does Galvanize provide you with top tier instructors who are incredibly well versed in code, a 6:1 student to teacher ratio, and a perfect environment for you to grow as a programmer, they also host events between employeers and students in order for both parties to network. Furthermore, the 5 story building is full of start ups who are working on amazing things. This enables students to network with these professionals in order to understand what their future may be like. This was another key factor which encouraged me to attend the Full-Stack Immersion program.
Overall, I have enjoyed the program tremendously. Over this past month, i have learned to believe in my abilities to write code and keep pushing even when times are tough. Galvanize teaches uo to establish a mindset of growth, which involves internalizing your accomplishments everyday, and to continue growing.
This mentality teaches students to constantly learn ad brush up on their existing skills. As a programmer, I think having this mentality is the most important thing. The industry is constantly changing, and it is important to know how to adapt to this changing industry.