Oh my… I’ve finished Hackbright! My memories of the past several weeks can be summarized by a picture thrown into Photoshop with the blur and smudge tools repeatedly running over it. Three weeks went by like three minutes. Here’s a condensed summary:

The final days prior to projects being due were some of the most harrowing hours of my life - it reminded me of some of my cram nights back in my college days. Demo night consisted of a 3-minute presentation to potential employers, followed by a 3-minute “speed-dating” session at each employer booth, and finally another hour of open networking. This is a newer model of how demo night is setup, and I thought it went pretty well minus the presentation part which I thought was way too short to introduce myself and explain a 4-week project. After demo night I was literally dancing around with glee; several of us celebrated with drinks and pizza afterward.

We had an private and public graduation to celebrate finishing the 10-week education portion of our program. When I came into this program I didn’t realize there was any sort of graduation ceremony, but Hackbright took this pretty seriously and treated it as an actual ceremony. It was a little overkill IMO, but it was really well done for being overkill - better than some graduations I have attended in the past. I appreciate that they made an effort to recognize us because it definitely adds to the feeling of accomplishment. (Although if you were to ask me, I will be reserved about my accomplishments until I actually get a job.)

The last two weeks we spent on career-related events ranging from panelist talks to going onsite to companies to get a feel for how they operate to practice whiteboarding/interviewing sessions and more. Oddly enough, the last two weeks were busier than project weeks because we had a fixed schedule and most days there would be events in the evenings.

I am now a couple days in with freedom and I can say the end has been really bittersweet for me. I am glad my time is finally mine again and that I have come out of the program not just knowing more than I did prior, but with the tools to continue learning moving forward. My cohort group was amazing - I will miss being in a room filled with smart, talented, and beautiful women who I respect greatly. I feel really lucky to be part of such an awesome group, and there are some who I am sad I did not get a chance to know better in our three months together. I hope most of us will keep in touch and/or return to the Alumnae lounge in the coming weeks, or possibly work together someday. This by far has been the toughest part of my entire experience at Hackbright - the part where we said goodbye.

There’s still plenty ahead of us. We’re just starting our journey, but look at us now and how far we’ve come. Our transformation from ((previous profession)) to software engineers can be summarized as such: