As I am only two days away from starting Mod2 at Turing School of Software and Design, I figured I add a post here with a few thoughts that I think might be useful for others who will start Mod1 in the future.

There are plenty of sources of good words, suggestions, advice and information. For this reason I will try to offer a summary of my unique perspective. I want to highlight what I think helped me and could have helped even more have I spent more time with prior to joining Turing.

But before I would get started, here is an initial list of sources of information that is available to you already prior to joining Turing. If you haven’t been aware of any of these, let your contact know or feel free to reach out to me and I would be happy to set you to the right direction.

1. Turing website: turing.io. Very obvious… :-)
2. Info night: Usually held on-site. You will receive plenty of details during this session and there are always people there to ask questions. Not only from Turing staff, but current and maybe even former Turing students as well.
3. Turing handbook: Make sure you read it through and familiar with its content. You will spend seven months of your life in this environment, so it is good to read it through at least once
4. Turing student advice: You would receive it from Turing staff. It is a list of suggestions, advice collected by previous Mod1 students. Maybe not all those points will be applicable for all new students, but in general they are all spot on as every single one of them is based on recent experience with the program.
5. Prework guide: You will be contacted by your assigned prework guide, which is awesome. As you work your way through the prework assignment, you might have questions about that content or about Turing in general. Your prework guide will be a useful source of information.

Since from these various sources you are already going to receive plenty of input, here is my own list based on my specific situation. Some items might still be applicable to you as well:

1. Becoming a MAC person: I have always been a Windows user mainly driven by the fact that in the corporate world that has been the OS of choice. Don’t underestimate the burden of switching to a brand new OS and computer system. If you can, make sure you pick up your laptop as soon as it is avaialble and get familiar with your new working environment. It is very frustrating, when you need to spend time googling how to do simple things, such as
   • how to install and remove applications,
   • finding, viewing and editing various content types,
   • delete instead of backspace,
   • general interface of the computer: touchpad for example and how you can use it efficiently,
   • adding and removing new drives,
   • if you had an NTFS formatted backup drive, how to write to it,
   • etc…
     
2. Prepare the family: This point is more to someone who will be joining Turing as a parent. As soon as you are accepted to the program, start preparing your kids. Especially if they are old enough to have meaningful conversations. In our experience repetition (drills if you wish…hehehe) is the key here. The more you bring this up to your children in various situation, the better off you will be later on. Simple things, such as the family will not be going out for dinner that often. Or Santa might not bring that many presents and it will not be because you behaved bad. Kids will eventually understand it, but it will take time. Why not start those conversations early on and set their expectation? Kids will even show their own way of appreciating the heads up and they can also help in their own way: “I will put this toy back to the shelf, so we can save money because Daddy/Mommy doesn’t have a job…” Kids are smart! Being less materialistic: make sure you hear plenty of times that you will not be spending that much time at home and with them in general. And that will not be because you don’t love them. Let me know how it goes!
3. Drills: There is a very good reason they exist and there is a very good reaon they are called “drills”. Do them whenever you can. Even if you go back doing drills of a subject only weeks after you learnt about, still do the drills. There is never enough repetition you can do to become a better programmer. At least in my opinion. Drills helped me a lot to get more familiar with basic concepts and avoid googling them when I had to work on projects.
4. Help others: This is a great thing for obvious reasons with the extra benefit of helping yourself while hepling others.
   • Troubleshoot code: You will see others’ code that is likely not working and it will help you to improve your troubleshooting skills working on something you have never seen previously.
   • Strenghten your knowledge: It is one thing to know and understand something, but it is a whole new thing explaining it to others. It will help you to confirm that you really know the topic or will help you to identify that your knowledge is not as rock solid as you thought it would be.
5. Don’t be afraid of the empty code editor screen: You will hear this mentioned by Jeff countless times: if you get stuck, just delete all your code and start again. Sounds simple, yet turned out to be a challenge for me to really practice it. I got caught up in the “my precious code, how could I delete it” endless circle.
   With all honesty that “precious code” was non functional and I was stuck for way too long trying to make it work.
   The first eye opener came, when on my first paired project, after we spent close to an hour trying to resolve an issue together, we decided to try troubleshooting on our own. I tried to make the already existing code work, while my project partner ended up resolving it by following Jeff’s advice: rewriting that method from scratch.
   On my next paired project, I ended up taking a leap of faith and in a similar situation, I was the one who followed Jeff advice, while my project partner tried to make the already existing code work. Again rewriting from scratch took us to the next step.
   So please, have confidence in yourself, delete what is disfunctional and don’t be afraid to start all over again!
6. Opening up as an introvert: If you are an introvert person, just like me, first you will find the significant community involvement at Turing overwhelming. But it will also help you in a way. Soon you will also recognize that there is really no other way than going forward.
   That being said, make sure you try to participate in everything that is available to you. That will help you to get to know other people whom otherwise you would not talk to because you are a very reserved person.
   This is actually a topic that would warrant its own blog post, but for now let’s just leave it with sharing with the summary of my experience: as much as it has been an effort for me to open up and talk to others about all kinds of topics, I see the benefit as well. Not only the personal effort that goes into it.