In March 2021, I decided to enrol in the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies' Coding Boot Camp. This was one of the best decisions that I have made throughout my entire post-secondary academic journey. Let me explain why that was.

First, I can preface my six-month experience in the Boot Camp by providing a high-level overview of the program. The University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies' Coding Boot Camp teaches students the specialized skills to tap into full-stack web development, which is a high-growth and lucrative career track. Through a fast-paced and immersive curriculum, students learn the skills required to become proficient in front-end and back-end web development technologies. Furthermore, these skills are put to the test with real-world project experiences.

The instructional team members and the resources provided to teach students full-stack web development were phenomenal! This boot camp was extremely well organized and left no stone unturned when it came to diving into the crevices of front-end and back-end web development technologies even though it required more than twenty hours of work per week. Furthermore, the weekly assignments and group projects helped reinforce the boot camp's material and provided students with the opportunity to build an impressive portfolio of web development work.

The boot camp participants came from a multitude of diverse backgrounds ranging from engineers looking to sharpen their web development skills to individuals coming from non-technical professional backgrounds looking to break into software development roles. Given my background in mathematics and the natural sciences, I naturally fall into the former category of boot camp participants. My classmates were kind, outgoing, and driven to achieve excellence in their work. Despite fostering these relationships remotely via Zoom and Slack, I felt that I have forged life-long professional relationships with individuals who were mere strangers six months before my graduation from the boot camp.

Throughout my boot camp journey, many mistakes were made and, consequently, many lessons were learned.

My biggest mistake made during the boot camp was underestimating the workload involved in learning full-stack web development. Consequently, I was habitually behind on the program's assignments as I struggled to juggle the boot camp work with my other academic and professional commitments. Although I was able to catch up and successfully complete the boot camp with a 97.25% grade point average amongst the eighteen weekly assignments - two of which I skipped without penalty - and achieve 96% and 100% for my first and second group project grades, respectively, my understanding of MERN-stack applications was weak going into the final group project, which cost me 6.25% of my final boot camp grade since I had trouble connecting the front-end and back-end of my group's web application.

My second biggest mistake was not attempting to collaborate more with my classmates on assignments and side projects that could have potentially extended past the completion of the boot camp. As in most professional domains, productive and mutually beneficial relationships can act as force multipliers for all parties involved and can help propel all parties to heights that they could have never dreamed of.

My third biggest mistake was not spending more time attending office hours (due to time constraints) and taking advantage of the one-on-one mentoring services offered by the instructional and support teams during the boot camp. This could have lead to more spontaneous web development-related insights and helped me forge more meaningful relationships with the instructional team beyond our student-teacher relationship.

To conclude, my experience in this boot camp this past summer is something that will propel me to new heights within the professional arena of my life, especially with respect to my entrepreneurial endeavours, and something that I will cherish. Thank you to all those who made the boot camp so memorable!

Feel free to check out jaspreetkhela.github.io/JaspreetKhela to find general information about me and links to my work-related social media profiles for more content!