Weekly wins: A TA's guide to success at Carolina Code School (part five)

Hello everyone,

It’s Chelsea Snider, your friendly neighborhood teaching assistant (TA), back with another exciting update on the progress of Cohort 18 at Carolina Code School. The excitement this past week is real because the students have officially started working on their final projects, and we can't wait for Demo Day! If you haven’t already registered, now’s the time!

Demo Day is an event celebrating the success of our cohorts, and this current cohort is creating some of our most unique and exciting projects yet! All week, the students have been brainstorming and refining their ideas, laying out plans to transform their passion projects into real, tangible, and usable applications.

Without giving too much away, this cohort has some truly unique applications in the works. Two of our students are leveraging their prior career experiences to tackle real-world issues, while our third student is diving into a passion project that promises to be something really fun! If you follow our students on LinkedIn, you’ll get regular updates on their progress and insights into their development journeys.

This week's biggest wins haven’t been about writing code but about meticulous planning and thoughtful preparation. Investing time in planning, creating wireframes, and crafting user stories can save developers a tremendous amount of time and effort in the long run.

Since this week has been primarily focused on planning, research, and setup, I thought it would be fun to give you some insights straight from the students. I asked the cohort a few questions about what it’s like to work on their final projects. Here’s what they had to say:

Question: What is the most intimidating part of developing an original app from scratch?

Megan: “The hardest part was starting. Thinking of project ideas was overwhelming at first, but once the ideas started getting narrowed down, my confidence in my project ideas started increasing.”

Question: What's been the most helpful for you so far during the initial stages of the project?

Megan: “Getting feedback from other people and becoming aware of others' perspectives about your ideas has been helpful. Each new perspective helps reinforce or reframe their project into something better.”

Question: Has troubleshooting your own project been easier or harder?

Santi: “Troubleshooting has been easier because all of my errors are in my own code, which I know. So it’s much easier determining the root of the bug or error.”

Question: What’s helped you stay motivated to succeed?

Jaylen: “The personal connections that I've made with everyone here, especially my classmates. The amount of support that we’ve gotten from everyone who works here, and even the willingness to offer help and support from the alumni have helped me to keep going.”

Question: If you could go back in time a week before you started on your final project, what would you tell yourself?

Santi: “Read all the documentation you can and read any ReadMe files!”

This week has been a lot of fun! It started out stressful, but as the students meticulously planned, brainstormed, and remembered that they have all the skills needed to build their applications, the stress levels have gone down, and their passion is burning brightly. These students' futures are promising, and we are so excited to share Cohort 18’s progress at Demo Day! Again, if you haven’t registered for a spot to attend our cohort's big day, please do so! We would love to have you!

Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to Demo Day! Thank you for following along, and as always, keep coding and stay curious!