Lessons learned after one month as a student at Makers

Adrienne Galloway is a recent Graduate from Makers. Here, she shares some advice for aspiring developers looking to join Makers.

Prior to joining Makers, I had embarked on a career in Public Relations and Communications. I began my career in Corporate PR, working with some of the UK’s well known FTSE 100 companies, before transitioning into technology and lifestyle PR where my clients included everything from a dating app to a high-speed air mobility company and venture capital firms.

Having successfully completed Makers and secured my first Software Engineer role, here are some of my tips for incoming students:

Connect with your peer group

At the beginning of week one you’re put into a peer group with a few randomly selected students from your cohort. This will be your peer group for the next 12 weeks. As a Makers student you’ll start everyday with an informal peer group check in. At first, I underestimated how helpful a peer group would be but it was great for discussing the workshops, challenges and resources. We felt comfortable sharing tips, asking questions and debugging code as a group.

Get a mentor

During the pre-course there will be an option to find a mentor. Students from previous cohorts volunteer to be mentors and it’s up to you to connect with them via Slack. I read through the profiles of each of the mentors and reached out to someone in the previous cohort who’s bio resonated with me. After connecting we set up bi-weekly catch ups to discuss challenges I was having with my code, reflect on recent projects and get insight into what the next few weeks might hold. We occasionally did some pair programming and she was great when it came to helping me debug something I’d been stuck on.

Organisation is key

A big part of adjusting to Makers in week one is being able to organise yourself and track your progress, including figuring out how best you want to do this. I started by using Google Docs, but after speaking with my peer group I very quickly moved to using Notion — a project management and note-taking software — so I could easily see and search through my notes. I spent some time playing around with the app trying to figure out how best to organise myself. In the end I created a weekly template where I would have notes from workshops, my goals for the week, links to useful materials and space for additional notes.

Try new things

Makers provides daily meditation and Yoga twice a week. Even if those don’t seem like your cup of tea, I recommend trying them out during the first few weeks at least — you might be pleasantly surprised! Attending daily meditation sessions, which were run by Dana Svoboda, Chief Joy Officer, helped me with alleviating stress and staying focused.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions

There’s ample opportunity for questions during the course. You are encouraged to ask questions during workshops, on the relevant slack channels and also to coaches when they give feedback. Your cohort will be invaluable when it comes to debugging throughout the course, and for the most part someone would have had the very same issue as you within their code and be willing to talk through a solution. Try to overcome any fear of asking questions in front of your cohort early on as they’re often the first port of call when you need a hand.

Submit your work for feedback

Weekend challenges, which are given at the end of each week to further learn the concepts from the week, are an important part of the course and an excellent way to identify and fill any gaps in your learning. Submitting your work for feedback on Monday morning is a great way to ask very specific questions. The coaches are forthcoming with feedback and are open to being asked additional questions.

Organising your time

Upon starting Makers I knew that there would be weekend challenges, however I had social plans booked in the diary well in advance and with this in mind I found it difficult to complete some weekend challenges to the best of my ability. Try to split your time up so that you are not sitting down to do a challenge all in one go. For example, try setting up the project and planning on Friday, and doing two chunks of work on Saturday and Sunday. This way you’ll have more time to debug and ask your cohort questions if you get stuck.

Setting goals

During week one we have a session on how to set goals which was particularly helpful and something that should be stuck to throughout the course. I found it extremely helpful to set weekly and daily goals, and it feels great ticking things off the list once they’re done. Overarching goals for the week are provided in the weekly outline that are a really helpful place to start.

Article written by Makers Scholar, Adrienne Galloway.