Calm? There was no calm! I was expecting the weeks leading up to our first day to consist of a bit of light reading and a few challenges here and there, but 3 days into the pre-course we seem to be in the thick of it already, and I’m already scared of falling behind. But I am already loving it 😊 Here are my thoughts on the last couple of weeks.

The moment I booked my interview at Makers I was presented with 12 hours worth of interview prep work, so I guess that was the point at which I said goodbye to my old life. After passing the interview Nikesh sent me some pre-pre-course material which kept me busy up until the pre-course meet up. At the time I thought it would save me some time later on, but I’ve now realised that the actual advantage is that I can delve deeper into the pre-course week 1 material and do a lot more research.

It seems everything I’ve read and everyone I’ve spoken to has emphasised the same points really:

  • You can say goodbye to your social life. Makers is your life now.
  • This is one of the hardest things you'll ever do but it will be totally worth it!
  • The staff and your fellow students will become a very important part of your life. They'll constantly be there with you for the next 16 weeks and will help you when you're close to giving up and crying in the corner.

I’ve already learnt not to take this advice lightly, and that everyone, without exception, needs to take it seriously!

Week 1 has been about command line/bash/shell scripting (I’m still getting to grips with the terminology). It’s been great fun learning how to use the commands and feeling like we’ve already started learning something fundamental that will no doubt come in useful to do even cooler things very soon.

The course material is fantastic, you can tell it’s a tried and tested formula that’s been improved upon for each iteration (a new cohort starts doing this every 6 weeks). We were provided with tutorials and challenges that increase in difficulty by just the right amount. Often you’ll be presented with a question that you half know the answer to, which makes you refer back to the tutorial, really fully understand what you read initially and then apply that knowledge. I feel like I’m learning a lot and very quickly!

I’ll sign off now by just saying…

mkdir post-2 cd post-2 touch second-blog-post

Ha ha I’m already speaking in a crazy secret language that only coders understand!

Nat x