Wanna feel smart?

Maybe a frontend development bootcamp could be the way for you!

All my (long) education I’ve been a top student, always with the best grades of the class. But what may be surprising is that I never felt smart. Not very good for self-confidence... I knew that I had a good knowledge, but it only felt like my brain was a database good enough to hold on lots of things. Nothing more than that. And if I was skilled at what I was doing, it was only because I knew how to use this database.

What I am saying is that it’s one thing to know that you are skilled, and it’s completely something else to feel that you actually are clever. It’s one (of many!) thing that going through a frontend development bootcamp taught me.

Don’t get me wrong! I don’t pat myself on the back all day, thinking I’m so intelligent! On the contrary, I mostly feel that I don’t know anything, which I think is good (even if it sometimes hurts more than I could admit to feel a bit dumb a good part of the day!) because it means that I am in the process of learning!

Let me explain with an analogy.

Traditional education teaches us how to build certain types of buildings. First degree, you know how to build a bungalow. Another one and you are skilled at putting together a garage. But you need another degree to learn how to build a cottage or a skyscraper.

With Technigo’s frontend development bootcamp, I haven’t learned how to build a particular building: I learned what the bricks do, how to put them together, I practised with a couple of them, adding always more, and so on. All this can now be used to build all kinds of houses and shacks! But most of all, I learned how to find out answers and solutions, which allows me to say with confidence that if I am not skilled (yet!) on something, I’ll simply find a way to make it happen.

The bootcamp’s pattern — learning something small (HTML and CSS basics), creating a tiny but working webpage with it, gaining some more knowledge on another bit (JavaScript), building something a little bit bigger with these three languages, adding one language and framework at a time, leading to a fullstack web app made with React/Redux, Node.js and MongoDB — makes it possible for me now to actually feel I am smart.

This precious feeling allowed me to gain confidence in myself and in my skills, so let me show you with pride my portfolio: nadialefebvre.dev!