"I saw a free workshop with Juno, and figured why not, I have nothing else to do; I’m jobless. So I went to one of those events. It was astounding to me how the teaching method was. I only wish I found Juno sooner!"
Reem began researching Juno and other coding schools:
"I reached out to Juno Alumni and they all had nothing but positive things to say. And that speaks volumes, in terms of how a bootcamp is, how they educate and inspire their students to be better developers. It was an astronomical difference between the other bootcamps around the city."
After chatting with one of Juno’s Student Success Consultants, Reem enrolled in Juno’s part-time JavaScript program prior to Bootcamp. “Little did I know, this JS course opened my eyes to so many things I never knew about when it came to web development and showed me the power of web functionality,” she says.
The course also helped boost her confidence and feel more prepared for Bootcamp:
"JavaScript can be a very daunting language to pick up. Taking the course helped me think critically about how I wanted to tackle my code in Bootcamp. It made me a better developer and gave me the time to write my code correctly, rather than Googling every instance of how to go about my projects!"
After completing the JavaScript course, Reem applied to Bootcamp, and was accepted into the Winter 2019 Cohort. While it was a big financial decision, Reem had saved up money while working in Australia and knew it was a worthwhile investment:
I felt comfortable putting the money down towards my education because I knew it would better me as a person, and project me to a better career path where I could really prosper. In my eyes, it was an investment for myself.
She points out a key difference between traditional universities and career colleges like Juno:
"For university, many of us go into it right out of high school, and you’re unsure of what you’re really going to do, or where it’s going to take you. With Juno, you know for sure what you’re going to do, because you have to make that big decision. They make sure you know that this is what you want. Also, bootcamp is not more expensive than university! At the end of the day, you’re basically ready to get a job after it. They’re not preparing you for a degree at Juno - they’re preparing you for a lifelong career change."
"It was the most intense 9 weeks of my life," Reem says. While it wasn’t always easy, the experience was inspiring and rewarding - especially in the long run.
“What I came to learn was that you’re not going to know everything by the time you graduate - you may not be an amazing developer, but Juno gives you the skills to enable yourself to be a great developer. They give you the skills to understand things in the long-term rather than just the short-term,” Reem says. “Whereas in university, you basically just study for a final exam, and then you forget all the details that you studied the night before. That’s not good education!”
Not only did Reem graduate with new skills and a portfolio to show them all off, she had a new sense of confidence in herself, and her abilities - especially her creativity.
“Juno wants you to be as independent and confident as you can be,” she says. “Anytime we submitted a project, I was over the moon. I personally never thought of myself as a creative person, ever - but when I went to Bootcamp and created my own projects, I was making the craziest projects, and got so many laughs from people, and that brought me joy. It made me realize oh wait, I am very creative!"
Juno sparked that creativity in me. It was a very enlightening experience. It challenges you, and with those challenges you find very new skills that you never thought you could have.
