Life after Bootcamp:
C2C Mentorship Program
Booster meet-ups for C2C mentorship participants
One of the challenges after attending a bootcamp event is the return to “normal” life. My own experience is an example of roller coaster highs (in terms of productivity and discipline) but also lows (where you just feel you are not good enough or going nowhere). Pretty normal and typical. This is when the C2C mentorship program reminds you that you are good enough and you are getting there at whatever speed. It is meant to provide accountability and shared goals during the next four months.
The concept of the C2C conference and meet-ups was meant to boost, energize, and re-engage with participants and role models. It is not enough to work on your projects, portfolio, or Skype alone and online. We still need a community to share the pitfalls and alternative ideas. This is exactly one goal in the latest meet-up held at CODAM in Amsterdam, a 24-hour coding “university,” which in itself is a radical approach to learning (take their two-hour entrance test) last January 23, 2019.
Status Updates: If you are feeling blue, anxious, or lost, the speed dating update will help you share and improve your mentorship experience. How? Find out how your peers navigate their mentorship experience and relieve yourself from unnecessary anxiety about your own. I found that most people even have less structured experience (both a pro and a con) compared to mine. They are either in the middle of learning a new programming language or familiarizing themselves in the field while doing their other jobs.
The consensus though is that a project-based mentorship program is more helpful to solidify the learning and structure. Mentor Christian Teuschel proposed that C2C design a start-up model to bring together mentees and mentors towards a central vision with real-time products and demands. It is something I wholeheartedly agree and useful for my learning track.
My mentorship experience is highly structured partly due to my preference and a necessity to structure my free learning time. I require a specific goal and product at the end. I am fortunate that Axelav and my mentor Erin Weigel asked me very specific questions about what I want to achieve for the program. So I took up their challenge to be bold and pragmatic. I really want to be job-application ready and Erin is even braver, “to have a job in the first quarter.” Yes, she is that kind of female tech leader oozing in confidence in me. Set, ready, go!
This goal really shaped my project-based mentorship program. This is the only way I could sustain myself during moments of frustration and despair. So far, I am happy to have invested energy and time in creating an my professional site and my UX research portfolio. These are works in progress aside from doing two current projects that both aim to update my case studies since 2007 and 2012 projects. I am heartened to know that we are in a good direction and could serve as a future model for others.
Fresh Faces. The best thing about attending the meet-ups is to meet new professionals in other fields. I chose UX research as my program track but I am also enamoured by data science. This was my chance to meet heroes from this field. This year a lot of mentees chose data analytics with matching impressive mentors like Christian Teuschel and Kanya Krisnanto. Wonderful surprises from different fields include digital strategist Clemence Brisac and product designer/programmer Esteban Beltran. I exchanged exciting ideas and experiences from generous heroes in different fields and encouraged me that anthropology is an advantage rather than a liability.
This is definitely a boost during the long slog of learning, errors, and self-doubt.
I therefore encourage other participants to attend especially when you feel that nothing is happening. Stay the course! We will have bad days but know that this will pass and good days are around the corner.
See you in March 2019
