A Thank You To My Teachers:
Well here I am, 5 months later and I’m about to pass my final assessment and graduate from the Software Engineering Program at Flatiron School. I proved it to myself that I could do it, especially with my husband being deployed all through it. Tackling 60–80 hour weeks with a one year old and two year old was NOT EASY in the slightest, but I did it! I’m almost officially done. I just got my husband home about a month ago, after he was away for 11 months and now I feel complete and can tackle anything. 020121 cohort was an awesome community (particularly incredible patience with crying kids in the background during classes) and I am beyond thankful to each and every classmate, but especially thankful to my cohort leads. This blog post is dedicated to my two teachers: Laura Berge & Eriberto Guzman.
To Laura, thank you with all my heart for being organized when teaching concepts and helping me learn to tackle my problems when I go down the rabbit hole. You inspire me to become better at coding daily and really dig deep and understand the why. Being women in tech is hard, but you lead by example and know why things happen. You taught me that women in tech are smart, strong and a force to be reckoned with. Never having any doubt that I would make it to the end of this and encouraging, not only me, but everyone in our cohort. Thank you for being my teacher.
To Eri, thank you for always being 100% honest and showing that it’s okay to not know everything. In this field, we aren’t going to know everything and that’s okay — you taught me to try to be the best researcher out there, when it comes to coding. I learned to be very resourceful by watching you tackle any problem that we brought to you and if you didn’t know the answer, it wasn’t the end of the world — you went right to google and would find it right away or suggest what route to take. That set me up personally to be very comfortable with using my resources wisely.
To both of you, thank you for being total opposites. Teaching me to adapt to different ways of teaching, which in the long run, helped me be a better coder at the end of the day. If I don’t understand something one way, it’s not the end of the world and it pushed me to figure it out one step at a time. If anything, it taught me to learn what I struggled with, in that moment, more in depth. Thank you both for being part of my journey as I start my career, you both shaped me into the coder I am today and as I strive to become better every day. So here’s my thank you to my two cohort leads that help built my foundation. Laura and Eri — you guys are awesome! ❤️
From: Your Student — Nicoll Oliver