accept me. So luckily I got into the program. Because I knew this would be a self-directed program, I had to be very disciplined with what I wanted to do. So before the program even started, I created a schedule for myself and a roadmap for myself because like I couldn't play, I wasn't here to play. I had to get a job after the program or else I would be homeless. So what was my schedule and what was my plan of action while I was at The Recurse Center? I can kind of split that up into four steps. So the first one was to learn and understand data structures and algorithms. Not only is learning data structures and algorithms important for you being an engineer and just programming, it's also really important for the interview process where you're basically being asked mostly data structures and algorithms questions. The second plan of action was to learn Python and be able to create a program in Python. Just by doing a little bit of research, I could see that Python was a very popular engineering language and I felt like, okay, let me add that to my toolkit. The third step for me was to build projects that I could show to employers. Fourth plan of action was really important, which was to network and meet essentially as many engineers as possible. So those were the four most important things that I had to do at The Recurse Center. So it was a really stressful period of time. Like I was grinding out there, like I would come in early, leave late every single day at The Recurse Center I would dedicate to following these four things, four goals that I had. So by July, NUMBER_TOKEN, the program was over and I was looking at my bank account and I was like, oh, okay, so I have about three months left of money or else I'm going to get my butt out of New York City. I have to figure this out, right? So how was the interview process for me? I'm going to be honest and tell you that I failed a lot of interviews. I failed HackerRank test that I was given. I failed phone screens, failed on-sites. I failed a bunch of times, but you know what's really funny is that the more you're doing interviews and you're working on interview prep is that you start noticing a lot of patterns, a lot of patterns reappearing and reappearing. Like I got asked the same couple of questions or same couple of types of questions multiple times and after a while, like once I failed it once, like I wouldn't feel it again 'cause guess what? I had already seen this question before so like I should already know how to answer it. And that's the thing. If you're in the interview process right now, just keep pushing. I promise you you'll get a job eventually, as long as you're making sure if you get a question wrong, you understand why you got it wrong and you do questions like that on LeetCode. You'll eventually get it 'cause I feel like interview prep is something that you can practice for and you can get better, even though there is a lot of luck in the process. What are the resources I would recommend for interview prep? So I would recommend that you do the very classic, "Cracking the Coding Interview." Check out that book. If you do that book front and back, you're pretty much set. If
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