Is dev school right for you? Here is what an average day really looks like

by Anthony Sodd
July 29, 2015

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Attending dev school is hot right now. People from all walks of life are leaving their day jobs and enrolling in schools that teach them to code and promise a new, rosier life as a software developer. While the prospect of quitting our jobs and learning to code is incredibly enticing, it occurred to us that we had absolutely no idea what a day in the life of somebody at a dev school was really like. So, we caught up with Jamie Kawahara, a student at the Turing School of Software and Design, and asked her to tell us what her average day was like. This is what she came up with:

Mornings

A typical day starts at 7:30 a.m. when I wake-up. Usually, I’ve been coding the night before until midnight, and I often have “coding dreams." Coding dreams are very common among Turing students. They usually involve dreaming about some sort of problem you can’t solve, and they range from enlightening to maddening. Most students just find them annoying.

For breakfast this morning a classmate gave me a pack of “Soylent” to try. It’s a type of protein powder that’s generated a following among coders. It’s become sort of a running joke because of its bland taste and the fact that some developers use it to replace meals so they don’t have to “waste” time cooking — or maybe they just don’t know how to cook. I blend it with bananas and blueberries and it tastes pretty good.

 

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This morning I’m meeting with The Joan Clarke Society for coffee at Common Grounds. This is a group of women students at Turing. Today our coffee was generously sponsored by the school, so we indulged in tall chai teas and large iced chocolate drinks. A new student asked me for advice on how to deal with the massive amount of information that we’re expected to learn, and I told her about Anki flashcard software which helps with memorizing software methods. She in-turn showed me a book on Recursion called “The Little Schemer,” which was recommended to us by a famous visiting teacher Katrina Owen. I have sympathy for the newer students because the first semester is the most stressful, but I also admire them because the faculty keeps improving the curriculum and new students are increasingly better prepared.

 

Arriving at School

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It’s 8:30 a.m. and time to enter school, or the “submarine” as we call it. It’s actually located in a basement underneath the Patagonia store in LoDo. It’s very common to spend 10 hours in there without natural sunlight, and it often feels like we’re isolated in a submarine. Quite a few students seem to have taken up smoking while at Turing — I think it’s a way for them to step outside and get some fresh air. I took a picture of a group of smokers, but one of them pleaded with me not to show it.

Upon arrival, first thing’s first, check the 3D printer. Yesterday I started a print for Justin who wants to make an Optimus Prime Transformer for his nephew who he doesn’t get to see very often since he’s here. It was a successful run after many failed attempts, and he’s prying it off of the bed. The 3D printer is one of my joys at Turing and the head of the school has been very supportive of providing materials and equipment to keep us “makers” happy.

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Classes Start

Officially 8:30 a.m. is Posse time. That means doing a warm-up with our posse, a small group of students that we belong to for the duration of our attendance at Turing. It's meant to function as a support group. Each posse has access to very helpful and experienced mentors. Above is a group being helped by the mentor Austen Ito, who is visiting from New York.

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At 9:00 a.m. classes start with Jorge. He taught us about building an API, which we will use in our project this week. Classes are organized in pomodoros, meaning 30 minute sections of instruction with 5 minute breaks in between. Often students will want to keep working on their computers during the break, but the faculty believes it’s more effective to rest the brain so Jorge usually claps his hands and says loudly, “Come on, get up, stand up, call your Mom!”

This semester I’ve been using my pomodoros to catch up on the social networking which I previously had been avoiding. It’s an important part of getting a job, so I review Twitter feeds on the latest 3D printing and hacking news, and peruse our school’s Slack channel for updates and event alerts. This is also my time to help coordinate a team of students that will enter the Pebble Rocks Boulder Hackathon in September. We’re really excited about it because it incorporates JavaScript, wearables, and 3D printing. The school is sponsoring our entrance fee so it’s very nice to feel supported.

 

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Afternoon

At noon it's time for lunch with Brett today, who is in my Posse. He’s a new student and wants to get to know folks here better. Chipotle is close by so many of us go there for lunch. 

From 1 p.m. until 3 p.m. is project work time. We’re building an API whose purpose is to send accounting analytical data to a website. Often we’ll work for many more hours outside of class on our projects. But, having time during class to work on them is great because we can ask each other for help and the instructors are there to advise us.

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From 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. we do Technical Interview Prep with the amazing Josh Cheek. These sessions are meant to help us practice for technical job interviews. They usually involve solving an algorithmic problem. Today’s challenge is “Merge Sort,” in which we make a sorting algorithm to sort a given set of numbers in ascending order. Usually these are extremely challenging, but today’s problem is solvable within an hour or so. 

At 4 p.m. it is time for wrap-up, a 5 minute recap of the day with the head of the school Jeff Casimir. He asks one person from each cohort to say what they’ve learned and also if any students have announcements about coding events they’d like to share. Wrap up ends in polite applause and then we’re done for the day!

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We're not really done, of course, and most people continue to work on projects until the late evening...

 

This has been a day in the life of Jamie Kawahara, a student at the Turing School of Software and Design. If you know somebody with an interesting life that you would like us to profile, email us at [email protected].

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