This post was written by Winston Chow, who is a graduate of our front-end bootcamp and a Front-End Developer at Demac Media. You can find his original post and more of his work here.
There are places in our lives that keep us anchored both physically and spiritually. The places we call home are often the ones with the right mix of community, inspiration and tranquility – places we can stay grounded in both the best and worst of times. In January 2015, I started HackerYou’s 9-week front-end development bootcamp with the hopes of forging a new path towards creativity and revitalizing my perspective on future careers. The program’s price tag and my own personal lofty goals meant I walked in with a small cloud of doubt over my head as to whether or not any of this would come to fruition. It did – and it happened much faster than I would have anticipated. As a cohort (nicknamed Hambun, after our lead instructor Wes’ favourite lunch item) we were all highly competitive and creative with each individual emerging as a digital artisan in their own unique way. We looked up to each other, picked up one another and ‘made cool shit’ together. As it turns out, nine weeks isn’t quite enough to learn everything there is to know on the Internet, but it does give you a sense of your strengths, weaknesses and topics for future personal exploration. The combination of casual conversation, tangential discussions during lecture and Friday afternoon ‘Show and Tell’ act as a natural guiding force for what one wants to tackle next. For me, HackerYou is a place where everyone radiates with creativity and positivity. It’s a place where conversations – both silly and serious – can happen at a moment’s notice. It’s a place I’m proud to call “home”. And as the saying goes, “Home is where the heart is.”
Check out our fifth cohort and the rest of our alumni community here.