Prime

Starting Again

Today I started the pre-work phase of Prime Digital Academy, an accelerated learning program for folks looking to transition into web development. I’ve tried this before. Tried to make the move on my own but have never quite made it. I’m hopeful that this time will be different. That spending a total of 18 weeks learning about web development will provide me with the foundation that I need to find a job and launch my career. I’m pretty anxious, apprehensive, but optimistic, too. I plan to take it one day at a time and focus on the task at hand. That’s the only way I know how to keep from getting overwhelmed.

The first six weeks are spent working on your own, watching and reading various tutorials. There are online meetings and discussion groups available for when I get stuck or need help. I’m hoping that they provide some additional motivation and support, too. It’s easy to get discouraged when working on your own so being able to reach out when your confused about a topic ought to help.

The second phase consists of twelve weeks of in-person training. We’ll be meeting every weekday from 8 to 5, with additional work expected during the evening and weekends. I’ll be moving up north shortly before hand. I have everything lined up so the transition shouldn’t be too bad. Fingers crossed.

Today I worked through the first module, an introduction to HTML and CSS. It was pretty basic but a nice refresher none the less. I’ll be completing another one tomorrow and then working on a few basic sites of my own to try and commit the material to memory. I’m not a huge fan of the tutorials that use an integrated text editor. I find them too restrictive. They also occasionally break and prevent you from progressing. I had that happen a few times today and it was pretty frustrating. In general, I don’t learn as much as I do when I’m just building things from scratch.

So that was day one. The first group meeting isn’t until Thursday. I’m looking forward to it, to meeting my classmates and the instructors. It’ll be nice to chat a bit and find out more about the group.

I don’t know how often I’ll post here. My goal is to add something once or twice a week. Just a quick check in and update on how things are progressing. I’ll try to add in and document what I’m learning, what’s sticking and what I’m struggling with. We’ll see how it goes. Until then.