Rockit has been over for a couple of weeks now. I’ve been really busy with interviews and job searching. I have to say that it’s truly amazing to me that already, several people (probably about half - if not more) of my cohort have accepted job offers. Some people have even started. To go from having little or no experience with development, to getting and starting a job, that’s an amazing transformational journey to take in only 14 weeks. We’ve all put in so much hard work and dedicated a significant portion of our time, so I’m thrilled to see many people succeeding.

One of the things that I didn’t really think about was the help that Rockit offers after we are finished. I started with Rockit Labs which is a less structured program to help us continue to learn as we are looking for jobs and while we are working. Most of the time people only dedicate a few hours a week to working on the Rockit Labs projects. Sometimes they are projects that people have started in class. For mine, I knew that I wanted to learn a new language, so I’m redoing a project I’ve done previously in the new language. I love the fact that Rockit Labs exists because it does instill a sense of continued learning and growth. I don’t think that I could ever be satisfied with the knowledge I have. I always want more. I’m even going to a Ruby on Rails workshop this weekend to learn yet another language.

As for my own job situation, I’ve had numerous phone and in-person interviews and two job offers and have taken one. I still have people calling me to schedule interviews, and I’ve had to turn people down. I haven’t started yet though. I’ve been dedicating my time to getting myself ready by studying the language they use and practicing with projects.

When I talk with other people about the Bootcamp, they have a hard time believing the good “luck” we’ve had with getting jobs and our experience in general. Honestly, I probably would be too had I not gone through the bootcamp. I’ve even had an interviewer ask me “How do you know all this stuff?” This is someone who already knew I went through Rockit, so I was a bit surprised to get the question. While I did do some work on Code Academy and Code School before starting Rockit, almost all of my hands-on project work and knowledge comes from Rockit itself. The teachers, before the first class, thought that it wouldn’t be possible to learn to code in only 12 weeks. It’s definitely possible though! While my work isn’t perfect, it’s definitely proof that Rockit’s program works.