Marvellous Learning Journey with the General Assembly

To stop everything in my life for a full-time educational program for 12 weeks from 9 AM to 5 PM every day. It's kind of a strange and difficult decision for me in my early 30s especially since I'm a solopreneur or freelancer currently, to be honest.

It was one of the best decisions I've made in my life because I discovered a new way of education that has transformed my mindset completely. It was learning about learning, one of my ironic viewpoints and weird outputs as always. LOL!

General Assembly is a private education organization that is based in New York with branches in various countries. They deliver tech-related courses in an innovative educational method where they combine practical tutoring with industrial training.

I joined the Software Engineering Immersive which is intended to prepare full-stack software developers from zero to hero (to some extent). The lead instructor, Tor Johnson, was a highly qualified professional with a wide business background.

We went deep into web development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery), web frameworks (React.js, Node.js, Express.js, Django, etc.), database management (MongoDB, SQLite and PostgreSQL), DevOps (i.e. development operations) and more.

The educational program was project-based without examinations. It's modelled after the concept of boot camp which means: "a type of physical training that consists of many different types of exercise, often done outside." [Cambridge Dictionary]

That journey made me somehow sceptical about traditional academic education, believing more in neo-pedagogy and going far toward what I can call "e-self-relearning" (ChatGPT still can't come out with something like this, LOL!).

Finally, the most important point is I have met great colleagues and instructors with whom I learned, worked, drank coffee and ate doughnuts together, and we laughed a lot (and cried sometimes) for 12 weeks from 9 AM to 5 PM every day.