My first post
Published: 2020-09-20 16:04:31

My name is Alice Holden, I'm 26 years old and I am currently about to begin the **_School of Code Boot Camp_** (cohort 4) to begin my journey to becoming a developer. 

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/t1yhvzyxxom9axzweccp.JPG)

I was born and raised in Leicester and when I was 19 after leaving my university course in mathematics I went to work full time at my previously part-time job at McDonald's. After 5 years of being in the fast food industry I decided I needed a change and didn't want to pursue a career in McDonald's.

At 22, I applied for a job in the back-office's of TSB, which was in Birmingham and ended up in me leaving my hometown of Leicester. After around 3 years of working in Birmingham, I realised I didn't wish to pursue any further career development within the bank and there wasn't any further knowledge I could gain from the role.

This leads me to the current apocalyptic year of 2020, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic taking a hold, I had decided I wanted to leave my job at TSB to commit to learning a career skill that I would feel some passion towards. After some good conversations with family and friends, and having a slight quarter life crisis at 25, I realised I wanted to pursue learning the skills of coding. 

After using some online resources such as [freecodecamp](https://www.freecodecamp.org/) and the [intro to CS50](https://online-learning.harvard.edu/course/cs50-introduction-computer-science?delta=0) course, I realised I wanted to find a structured course to assist my learning and to help make sure I was going in the right direction with my learning. I had looked into courses at the local Birmingham university, however this came along with a £6,000 price tag which was out of my financial availability at the time. I also was unsure of entering a university environment again as I am aware it is very independent based learning with limited support from professors. 

After finding the School of Code's website, I was feeling very hopeful that this could be my chance to learn the skills needed to get into the industry, without a hefty price tag, and leave with a good chance of getting a career in the industry. In addition, I could tell from the testimony's of previous students that this would be the kind of course I would benefit from, and it appeared to have a good support system in terms of the School of Code team. 

Once I was accepted after my application, I had a strong sense of nerves mixed with excitement. Nervous that I wouldn't be able to understand everything and would end up lagging behind other students, something I will relate to '_imposter syndrome_'. However once we met up for the pre-course sessions a lot of my nerves dropped and I realised the support I would need is available. This helped reduce my anxiety, but I feel a good sense that the team want to help you not only improve on your coding skills, but your self-confidence skills in general. With a focus on 'how to learn', such as the 15 minute rule (15 minutes of thinking and 15 minutes of researching before asking questions), I am optimistic to see where my mindset is at the end of the course, as I can feel this is going to be a big shift in my mindset and how I look at working and learning in general.