If you’ve read any of my other posts, you’ll know I’ve started a Skills Bootcamp to learn DevOps. I’m now on day 23 and in the middle of my Christmas break. I hope you all had good holidays and enjoyed whichever festivities you celebrate.

As it’s New Year's Eve, it’s a time for reflection on the past solar cycle and also a time to look forward and plan for the next. If your plan is to change jobs, then a Skills Bootcamp could be for you (so long as you meet the criteria). I’ve already explained what they are, how to get on one and what they do. Now I’m going to share with you what it’s like to actually be on one. Remember, this is specific to a digital skills BootCamp, but will most likely have similarities regardless of the skill you’re learning. In this post, I’ll share with you what you should do before, during and after your first few lessons.

Set-Up:

Failure to prepare is preparing for failure. — Benjamin Franklin

A good set-up is a key to enjoying and learning from a class, especially if it’s LFH (learning from home). If you spend the first half-hour of each lecture getting yourself set up, you’ll miss what your teacher is saying. So prepare for the class in advance. I had weeks to set up and slowly built up a good set-up with recommendations from the teachers. Here are some key set-up points:

• ensure everything you need is at hand and charged. There’s nothing worse than having to spend 10 minutes running around looking for a spare pair of headphones because your Bluetooth ones died just as the teacher says “Above all, remember this!”. Have a pen and paper/notebook/text file ready to take notes (more on that below).
• make sure that your working environment is well lit, comfortable and quiet: Make sure everyone knows you’re going to be busy for the next ‘X’ hours and not to disturb you unless it’s an emergency. Make sure you have a comfy chair (try to avoid the bed if possible) for several hours and that your screens are set up as per DSE standards. Also, make sure you’re warm/cool enough for the next 2 + hours.
• Go to the toilet/bathroom: trust me, you don’t want to be counting down the seconds till the teacher agrees on a break. They may miss it, or your mother in law will go in for a shower just as you’re about to run in. Don’t rely on there being a break. The teachers will always try, but they’re on the clock, and if they need to, they may cut the break to allow to fit all the teaching in.
• Eat before class: If your class is in the evening after work, they tend to start soon after work is finished. Mine starts at 1730. As I’m home anyway, I eat a light dinner before class. You don’t want to be the person whose microphone catches the growling stomach demanding to be fed. At the same time, don’t eat a full-blown 3-course meal, or you’ll fall into what I call the Pudding Hour: the traditional time for a siesta and you’ll fall asleep headfirst on the keyboard typing gibberish to the chat.
• BE ON TIME: In my class, the teachers will do a roll call. Not the kind in school, but they’ll make sure that everyone is online when they should be ( it’s also part of the criteria for being fully funded by the government). If you’re not online without telling them, they may want to know where you’ve been or why you’re late. Of course, life happens; if you know you’re going to be late (stuck at work, in traffic, putting the kids to bed, lost in time & space) then let one of the teachers know ahead of time if possible. Just because it’s an online class doesn’t mean you can arrive late.

The best way is to be ready and signed in to your Teams or Zoom call up to five minutes ahead of the lesson starting. You may find other students have also arrived and can start talking to them.

During Class:

Once the hellos and introductions are out of the way, the teachers will start discussing this weeks’ topic. There is almost always a slide that will have a summary of what you’ll learn. Listen attentively and make notes as you go. Make sure you interact with the teachers. Don’t leave them hanging when they ask a question. Remember, they may be as nervous as you at first and no one likes an awkward silence. You can either answer in the chat, or unmute you're microphone and answer. If you’re confident enough, turn your camera on and let people see you. It’s easier to connect with a face than a name.

A note on Notes:

I quickly learnt in my first few classes not to write everything down on the screen or in PowerPoint. Unless you’re proficient at shorthand (which I’m not), then it’s a waste of time. You’ll spend too long having half-finished sentences because the teacher has moved on to the next slide that the notes will become next to useless. Plus (on my course, at least) you’ll get the slide deck later to go through anyway, so you’re only going to be duplicating efforts. What the notes are useful for is to note down what is not on the slides. Make notes on the stories the teacher tells, or examples they give to help clarify a topic. Make the title of the note something related to the slide (like the main title, slide number or topic) and note the story or explanation. This will be useful later.

Don’t be scared to interrupt the teacher to ask a question. You can either use the “raise hand” option in teams, type it in the chat (although this could go unnoticed if they don’t monitor it), or better yet, unmute yourself and ask (depending on your teachers’ preference). I know it sounds trite, but there really is no such thing as a stupid question. If you’re coming to this course from well outside the field, chances are you’re going to be flooded with new information and taking it all in is going to be hard. If you really don’t feel comfortable in those methods, send an email or DM to the teacher, and they’ll get back to you asap.

After class:

Once the class is finished, the most important thing you can do is relax. Pat yourself on the back! LFH is not easy, especially when you don’t know the subject matter, so congratulate yourself (and others) on finishing the lesson.

Oftentimes, one or both of the teachers will stay on for a few minutes to answer any questions. This is the time to ask if you weren’t comfortable asking during the session. Some teachers may even take you into a side room to help with a technical issue, or agree on a time to do so. Some people stay and chat about their team project, but most people leave as soon as they can. In fairness, it’s late, you’re tired and maybe hungry.

Writing up your notes:

As soon as you can, review the slides from the last class and write your own notes. If your course is part-time (like mine), you only have four-and-a-bit hours of class a week on a topic. In the tech world (and especially DevOps) that’s just not enough. You need to dig deeper than what you’ve gleaned from those four hours to understand the material. There will be links and off-shoots that weren’t covered in class that you should read to learn the concepts better. Personally, I do this by going back over the slide deck and writing my own notes. You can use handwritten or typed and organised how you want. I prefer to use Notion to organise my notes as it allows me to include code and markdown. I wrote a bit about how I did that in a previous post.

Make sure you read any links in full, as these will most likely give you a better understanding of what your teacher was trying to convey. Ask them if they recommend any books or websites in particular to read. As it was Christmas last week, and my fiance didn’t have a clue what to get me, I gave her a list of books on DevOps that the teachers suggested. I had one to open on Christmas day and one waiting to be released in the coming weeks. I intend on reading these to help with my journey through DevOps.

Conclusion:

If your first few weeks are anything like mine, they’re going to be a whirlwind of information, people and new things to do. Take it easy and take your time. Use these tips to try and make it easier and remember: the teachers are there to help you learn. use them, and you’ll enjoy the experience a lot more.