Five Life Lessons Coding Bootcamp has taught me

I have never liked camps. The intensity of it, the short period, and the fast pace were not up my alley. A quick Google search shows that 15% of recruits in US marine boot camps don't make it to the other side. I digress though. This is not about the US marines.

A couple of months ago I enrolled at Moringa for the Data Science and Machine Learning course. To be honest, I was fearful and doubted my ability to make it through. I'm happy to announce that I did actually finish the course and dare I say I loved it. Here are five lessons I learnt there.

Team Work is the Dream

As cliche as this sounds, it is true. At Moringa School, we worked in teams throughout the course. Working in teams speeds up problem-solving and results in better outcomes. At Moringa, we had the concept of pair programming whereby one is assigned someone to work learn along with. Like how you had a deskmate in high school. Of course, working with your pair means you learn how to reach out, how to express yourself and solve problems with another person. You also have to keep learning so that you too can contribute to the team. I mean you don't want to be the burden, do you?

Small incremental changes

I've always wondered how I got from abcd to making complete sentences in English. What magic did they use? Generally, I am not a great student but small bite sized chunks are easy to work with. As you learn, you begin with simple lessons that you aggregate over time. I still remember the first day I typed print(1+1) and it gave me 2!! Boy! Was I not impressed! But slowly, I stacked up my tool kit and soon I could work with whole datasets. What's my point? Learn something small everyday incrementally and watch yourself grow.

Learn how to Learn

Learning how to learn should be a whole course in every college. As a Kenyan millennial, I'm a product of the once-celebrated and now-hated 8-4-4 curriculum.We were great at passing exams but pretty poor at learning. While Moringa guided us through the learning, we also had to do a lot of research on the side. They spoonfed nothing to us.

One of the greatest aspects of learning how to learn is time management. The course is delivered online and gives you the flexibility to learn as you wish. In the early stages, you waste time but as the course progresses you quickly learn that misusing your time results in being left behind. As a matter of fact, I spent many a weekend playing catch up..I should have been wiser.

Learning to learn is about learning how to use google, how to ask questions and not just any questions but the right questions. We can't just cram everything and regurgitate it later, that's not how this works. For sure, this was the hardest adjustments for me to make.

The process is the reward

Cliche, no?

Honestly, I couldn't wait to be done. To call myself a junior data scientist and be on my merry way. But, looking back I miss school. I miss the pressure of our weekly independent projects, working with my classmates to figure out blockers and the horror of morning stand ups. As I gear up to begin the next phase, job hunting, I want to enjoy the process and be present and intentional.

It's not over till the fat lady sings

It's never over until it's over, and in this case it probably will never be. I can never exhaust all the learning there is in data science. I have to keep learning, unlearning and relearning. I have to keep adding to my tool kit and sharpening all the tools.

It's been a great run, I have learnt my lessons and I've enjoyed the process. I'm not saying you should join a bootcamp but if you do, I hope my lessons give you a leg up!