Actualize

I am writing as the oldest member of my cohort, and I'm pivoting away from a 20 year career in entertainment.
The pandemic left my industry closed for 18 months, and I discovered an interest in programming. I was determined to become a programmer by myself, self-taught, and that should be enough to maybe get an entry-level job, so I joined Codecademy.
For the next 8 months, I spent 6 days a week, 1.5 hours a day, not trying to just complete the courses, but to digest them and take copious notes. I thought that was my path, but, I knew there was a world of information I was missing that I couldn't even imagine.  How do I ask a question about a topic I can't begin to describe?

I came to Course Report in February 2022. The algorithm here puts the most reviewed schools/programs in the top-billed spots, which objectively makes sense.  I sent out applications to a few different schools, but nothing felt like a fit. It wasn't until day 3 of looking that I found Actualize. I hadn't seen it here on Course Report, which puzzled me, so I searched.  Actualize IS on Course Report, and it was consistently ranked higher than every other program I was pursuing. Read that again.  Actualize is higher ranked by students than other, larger schools. If you don't believe me, search right now.  If I'm wrong, I'll eat my hat. That's something the kids say, right?

The staff was immeasurably helpful through registration. There is financial assistance available, which may help curb the cost of enrollment.  I would ask you consider that, as the initial price tag is steep.  Having lived it, I would have paid more, which is crazy to say.

Once I was accepted, I had a few weeks before pre-work started, and I was humming with anticipation, mostly because I only had word of mouth to go by, and testimonials like this. I had no idea what to expect, and I usually like to walk into new situations a little more prepared, but eventually pre-work began. Also, I signed up for the evening sessions, as I work better at night.  I'm a vampire with a capital "B."

If you have taken a course of Codecademy Pro, the pre-work will feel very similar to an "Intro To..." course. It was paced out well for me, but I had an element of familiarity with core concepts across all languages (Strings, Integers, Booleans, Loops, Arrays, Hashes/Dictionaries, Classes, OOP, Functions). This course is designed to help you even if you don't have this foundation. You don't need this foundation, but it helped. To make this clear, I had not taken the Intro to Ruby course, which is the first language you will be taught, but I felt well equipped to begin.

I enjoyed my pre-work instructor, Kevin.  Cool guy, good knowledge base, and was fully prepared to admit when he didn't know something.  That's an idea I had to get comfortable with myself.  Ask questions if you have them, friends. You will get as much from any course of study as you put into it. If the instructor doesn't know, they go to your eventual instructors to ask! This program is a populated by a community of people who are coming together to help you learn best.  I get the sense that every cohort (your class) teaches our instructors how to teach the next group better.  It's that passion for teaching well that sets them apart.

Expect 20 hours a week of instruction by video for the pre-work window.  Every Thursday was 2 live office hours with Kevin, where he would answer questions about the "homework" from the past week for hour one, and the second hour would go into greater detail about one of the more difficult practice problems of the week.  It's nice to begin to be able to speak to another person about code.  I didn't know how much I wanted that until I got it. The pre-work group is pared down into smaller classes for general instruction.  I think my group went from pre-work 15 students to cohort 7 students.

I was lucky enough to have Peter Jang, the full-on Dean of Instruction, as my teacher. This guy has forgotten more about code than I've learned in my first ten months, but not in a bad way. It was actually exciting, because I was finding out keyboard shortcuts, or industry specific jargon, or random conventions on my first day than I hadn't discovered in months of self-teaching.  I was immediately learning the things I didn't know I didn't know, and I rode that high for weeks. I knew I spent my money in the right place on the first day of official instruction, no joke.

The evening cohort's schedule (for me, in California) 4:00pm - 7:30p M-Th, 7:00am - 3pm Sun (1 hr lunch). I loved the evenings. 3.5 hours of new information every day was the perfect amount for my brain.  Sunday was a little rough, because 8 (7) hours, but The day is broken into 3 hours of instruction, lunch, one hour of "job-hacking," and then three more hours of instruction.  That last 1.5 is rough on Sunday, but doable.

I won't lie, this can be dense stuff.  More often than not, you will be asked to do something before you understand it.  The understanding will come through repetition.  Connections will be made almost subconsciously as you practice you Rails CRUD, but it happened.  Peter uses the two-week paradigm to calming us down: Just remember where you were two weeks ago, and how that foreign concept seemed alien, but now you basically get it.  It's not foolproof, but it was a pretty reliable way of keeping me from spinning out, and I always noticed results.

Nervous Nellies, listen up: The program will teach you that working with other people will be integral to your upcoming career. It seems obvious in retrospect, but your job will, most likely, be for someone else's company, updating their code with a group of people whose responsibility is to ensure you are doing your job. I was not looking forward to group anything.  I'm not super confident in my coding, and the last thing I want to do is show it to other people. Guess what? Suck it up, buttercup. Day 2 you are paired off with a fellow student. I don't remember coding that day with a partner, but every class session begins by pairing or grouping students into break-out rooms, and they are given conversation prompts to help break the ice.  Oof. Nothing feels worse than being forced to talk to someone when you don't have any idea who they are.  If the program hadn't forced me out of that comfort zone, I never would have chosen it for myself, and I think they get that, too... Which is why they force you out.

They knew better than me, by the way. I only had six fellow cohort members, but I looked forward to catching up with someone after a few days of not speaking. Turns out, I really dig these people.  I would not have learned as much, or been as motivated, if I was left in a corner to do my homework. You may be shaking your head.  I wouldn't have believed me either, but I plan on keeping in touch with some of the folks I really clicked with.

Sometimes, no. Often? No. Okay, actually there will never be a time when you know everything about coding. This program effectively teaches its subjects, but the key to a successful CAREER is how well you learn to learn.  I know, I know how it sounds, but Actualize gave me foundational knowledge that I can use that will continue to help me keep learning past the last day.

The Job-Hacking portion of the program, masterfully organized by Lisa Tucker,  was my least-understood part of the program before starting. Is it job placement? Nope. It's better? I'd say yes. Along the lines of teaching you how to learn, this portion of the curriculum teaches you how to understand yourself, how to market who you are as a person using specific and proven techniques, but also make yourself as versatile a candidate as you can be. It turns out there's a science to this, and Lisa is a wizard, her staff as well. I'm not where I want to be regarding networking, but I feel very empowered to continue my job search.  You will be applying for jobs before you graduate.  

I don't want any of this to discourage you, I'm telling you this because you are about to be handed the keys to a powerful and boundless kindgom, but only if you are committed. If you are prepared to work hard, study hard, and be over-whelmed at least once where your brain just says, "You've got to be kidding me. That's it, I'm leaving," but you still come back, then I recommend Actualize Coding Bootcamp for your instructional dollar.

Actualize is one bootcamp among many with ostensibly comparable curricula. The course currently focuses on Ruby on Rails for backend and Vue.js (Vue 3) for frontend development, though they're always making tweaks and updates to stay current. It's organized very rationally into three sections: pre-work, live instruction, and the job search. Live instruction is typically the 'meat' of what people are looking for in coding bootcamp, often giving less consideration to incoming skill level or the real-life challenge of finding a job after the live course.

The staff at Actualize are available to guide and support you all the way through, whether you're coming in with significant coding knowledge or none. Pre-work is self-paced and teaches fundamentals of Ruby programming. Live instruction is taught by one of several lead instructors (who may or may not have some great terrible jokes for the class) with additional TAs available to answer questions, and goes into some level of depth on backend and frontend web development. I was in a cohort of 12 and there was nearly always one TA in class with us, which is a significantly better student-to-teacher ratio than some other programs I researched.

Live instruction was somewhat less intensive than I expected, but there's a good deal of suggested/optional homework to both review in-class material and explore topics in more depth, if you have the time and/or energy for it. I'm moving into the job search phase now, which includes specific instruction along with one-on-one support for as long as you need.

Sure, I could likely have learned much of this material on my own from various online resources, but if you get overwhelmed with the universe of material that's out there, don't know where to start, need to be held accountable by real human beings or just know you do better in class settings, this might be for you. I can't speak to the full extent of career support at this point, but the knowledge that I will have access to career advisors and the Actualize alumni community for as long as I need, I have a feeling that will be a truly invaluable resource.

I chose Actualize because they emphasized long-term learning over teaching too many technologies in the short term. I'm leaving the bootcamp with strong foundational knowledge I can use to learn new technologies independently. I found that to be a lot more valuable than getting exposed to too many things and not understanding how to continue learning independently post-bootcamp. Our instructor also took the time to gauge how we were feeling about certain topics and would spend an extra day diving a little deeper if we needed. Our feedback, confusion, and questions were taken seriously, and he took the time to thoroughly explains things to us or change up the schedule a little to fit our needs.

During the bootcamp, I experienced varying levels of doubt/imposter syndrome in myself and the work I was completing. The best choice I made was to voice these concerns with my instructor, teaching assistants, and career advisor. No matter how many times I reached out, they were incredibly supportive and encouraging. They really helped with putting my fears into perspective so I could grow past them. Although it's not an easy process, I felt as though I had the right people in my corner to bolster me up when needed, and I'm incredibly thankful for that. 

I would recommend Actualize to anyone who wants to enter a bootcamp with a strong support system of instructors, teaching assistants, and career advisors to foster long-term success. 

For anyone on the fence - let this be the sign that you should do it. It is amazing how much you can accomplish in a few short months. 

I thought about attending a bootcamp for a few years, and over that time considered a number of bootcamps that operate in Chicago. Going in, my criteria were:
- Able to attend in person
- Full time
- Focus on a single stack of technologies due to the short duration of a bootcamp

Quite a few bootcamps met these criteria. COVID restrictions meant that no programs were offering in-person, so I went for their live virtual classes and was happy with the experience. What set Actualize apart for me was their focus on education. Their website states that they are educators first. While I can't compare with other bootcamps having only attended Actualize, I can attest that the instructors are excellent at communicating and reinforcing complex topics to people from a wide range of backgrounds. Our cohort had teenagers and people with grandchildren, people with CS backgrounds and folks who had never coded before joining. The instructors are engaging, passionate, knowledgable, and have plenty of real-world experience to share.

The curriculum is well designed for newcomers to writing software: 
- Ruby is a great choice for first-time coders as it is not burdened by verbose syntax - this focuses students on picking up fundamentals like conditionals, arrays, hashes, loops, etc. rather than debugging where they missed a closing punctuation. It is a language designed to read like english, which is super approachable and fun to code in. This gets you started, and further into class you can explore other languages more easily.
- The program focuses on a small set of languages and reinforces fundamentals through repetition, building your knowledge up until you are proficient with a stack. Some other bootcamps promise to teach you many different popular languages, rather than going deep into a few. Actualize equips you with the ability to pick up other languages as needed (aka when you are getting paid at a job). 
- Each week there is "job hacking" - dedicated career advisors coach you through the steps needed to get a job and succeed after bootcamp ends. Resume writing, personal websites, interviewing, types of employers, etc. are all things they help you with.
- Post bootcamp, graduates continue to attend a course dedicated to practicing data structures and algorithms and preparing you for your interviews.

Culture wise, Actualize is a very welcoming, accommodating, and honest place to learn. There were many times that folks from my cohort considered leaving, but the supportive atmosphere and encouragement from teachers and peers kept 100% of my cohort mates through to graduation. It is a small company and the folks who work there all seem like a tight-knit family - they take care of their people, which permeates through to them taking care of their students and alumni. Alumni who have moved on to full-time positions frequently popped into class to say hello and offer their perspective, experiences, and advice. From reviewing other bootcamps there seem to be a few that are patched together to get as many students through so they can get paid - Actualize feels like the opposite of this, that their instructors would do this even if money was no object to them, they love to teach and to see their students succeed.

Actualize doesn't prepare you just to get a job, they set you up to have a career. They teach you to be curious and explore, to be excited to code each day, and to work on whatever you might be interested in. Like pulling the cord to start an engine, you may have tried before this to learn on your own through classes or books, but yet you still haven't found success. Actualize was the pull that got the engines going for me and so many others. You can do it too!

For me, where I am in my life (career pivot, woman, parent, eager to learn and grow), this was absolutely the right decision--no question. And no question that this was the right place to do it. They have their shit together, they are not a scam, and it's a great place to go through a hard, huge thing. For me, this was more than just learning coding. It was learning how I learn, and fighting back against some shitty, mean-ass voices inside my own head that have lived there for too long. Because there are so many variables going into whether or not it's the right decision for you, I am hesitant to recommend the bootcamp model blindly. If you've got specific questions (like I did when I came to CourseReport to read reviews about Actualize) I would be happy to give more detail or answer questions. Find me on LinkedIn and let's chat (unless you're weird or pervy, in which case, please don't).

One specific thing I will say: for women, or anybody who may feel like they don't belong in the dev community, listen up. Get yourself a teacher who looks at you like Amanda. She won't do the work for you, but she'll light a loving fire under your ass to see your own potential and give yourself credit for what you can do. 
 
I am very, very grateful for this experience and proud of myself for taking the leap. 

 

I chose this bootcamp because they were the only bootcamp that I found that had live instruction. This made a huge difference because I learn better when I have someone demonstrating things to me instead of just following instructions or doing just assignments. I like having that feedback, especially when I learn something completely new. I thought it was a great experience, I liked that we actually got to code with our instructor as she was demoing. I would recommend this bootcamp to people who need an actual instructor present to be able to learn. They are a small company, which was a big plus for me especially because bigger companies usually just want your money. The big companies don't really seem like they care about your outcomes but at Actualize you really feel like they care about your success. After graduation, they don't leave you hanging which is great. I'm writing this on my last day of the cohort and I'm planning on extensively using the job hacking resources they provide.

I was referred to this Bootcamp by two former Actualize alumni and the only thing I regret was not joining sooner! My experience and the curriculum were superb! I couldn't imagine learning this much in such a short time. All the instructors were phenomenal, Kevin in prework, Katherine as the lead instructor, and the TAs.All were always more than willing to help and go over anything you were stuck on. It doesn't stop there, Lisa in career services has been super helpful in my job search. I recommend enrolling if you're looking to get into web development!

Actualize was an amazing experience where you learn so much in such a short period of time. The program starts with a month of pre-work where you learn the fundamentals of coding syntax and data types, then from there you start the 3 months of live instruction where you learn to create full stack applications. They do a great job teaching you lots of complex concepts, in their entirety, quickly and effectively. The curriculum is excellent and my instructor was a really great teacher as well. If you are looking for a bootcamp to launch your career in tech, I couldn't think of a better place.