2020 was a transformative year to say the least. In the midst of the silence and stillness of my apartment I felt a sense of capability and a call to change, but what did that mean? It felt like lifestyle, but that was obvious because I saw no clear route back to what the world was rapidly moving away from. Did it mean creatively? Maybe, I had spent twenty years carving out a place in this world as journalist and while I’ve certainly had my share of successes I really felt like the most impactful thing I could do in the present moment was prepare myself for more, take the down time and make myself better -so I landed on career change, and believed that because of my background and interests I could comfortably segue into tech via the lane of programming.
*According to Statista “The global developer population is expected to reach 28.7 million people by 2024, an increase of 3.2 million from the number seen in 2020.” While that’s less than 1% of the population, that’s still millions who make the world as we know it more digitally expansive by the day. The common denominator isn’t that they’re great at math, or that they’re super graphically inclined, or even that they’re geniuses academically-the unifying theme is that they didn’t learn these programs over night and** the best among them will admit that they did not learn how to use these tools “fast”.
It just so happened the popular coding academy Zero to Mastery was offering their critically acclaimed course for a free 6month trial. The courses were wonderfully mapped out and the pre recorded lectures were amazing, but unfortunately I found that the isolation of quarantine caused me to feign real time human interaction more than usual and the lack of conversation I was having around the logic of code made it hard to stay focused, so I opted out thinking, “maybe this isn’t for me”. Fast forward to July of 2021 and while much of the country tried to resume some semblance of normalcy, the vestiges of coronavirus were everywhere , including in the educational sector where institutions had been pumped full of funding from the federal government. This meant that now many brick and mortar institutions and digital bootcamps alike were all following ZTMs’ lead and offering their education platforms for practically free. Never one to make opportunity knock twice, I answered again, this time with the intention of it moving in. This particular program had awesome marketing; “change your life in 12 weeks!” mantras echoed from every cta on their website and their SEO was top tier, and incredibly effective in convincing me that they were well known beyond just my quarantine bubble. Throw in an incredibly energetic and personable Admissions Advisor and I was sold. But as I and my other 28 classmates would soon realize, some things that glitter are actually gold, while others are just gold plated.
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