Formation Fellowship: Week Zero
A new chapter begins…
So, it’s been a few weeks (as usual, heh). What have I been up to? What happened to Grind75?
I’ll tell ya. What happened is, I reached the medium-level questions and got utterly stuck. So I adjusted my strategy and since then I’ve…mostly just been flailing. The good news is that I can get any Leetcode Easy question start-to-finish in under 20 minutes! If it deals with looping through an array. And even then, “any” is a strong word.
But, I’m coming along. I’ve been trying to learn linked lists, I’ve been charging through all the Leetcode Easy questions, etc etc.
The real thing, though, is that I realized that I really need help in leveling up my coding skillz and job search. I mean, I’d pretty much decided this way back in June when I first heard of the Formation Fellowship, but my recent success failure in securing an entry-level job for myself has made this all the more clear. I. Need. Help.
Before I get too far ahead of myself here, what is the Formation Fellowship? It’s a career accelerator, which is essentially a service that helps job-seeking folks like myself prep for technical interviews and optimize the job search, in exchange for a percentage of base salary for a set amount of time. For Formation, that means 15% of pre-tax base salary paid out over the course of a year, with a cap of $25k. It’s a lot, yes, but they guarantee that they’ll work with you until you get the job, you don’t have to pay a single red cent until you get said job, and honestly, 15% off of an actual honest-to-goodness starter job in a career field I’m desperate to break into is still worth it to me. See above re: flailing.
So anyway, I pitched the idea to Jarrod a few months back and surprisingly, he was on board. So I took Formation’s initial assessment and got a call! The call went…not great, let’s be honest. I was certain they wouldn’t be interested in me. And indeed, I found out the next week that I’d been placed on the waitlist. Le sigh.
The waitlist seemed nowhere near ending, and honestly, the good folks at Formation kept telling me I should really look for other stuff (seriously!), so I did — I discovered Pathrise, and also that Formation’s schtick wasn’t unique. Career accelerators are a thing! I submitted all my information to Pathrise, set up a call, and had a video chat with their lovely recruitment coordinator, Tajanae. Tajanae let me know on the call that they would go forward with me, and sent me next-steps information before I even logged off.
So, what happened? Why am I starting with Formation after all this?
Well, because suddenly, out of the blue last Friday morning, Formation got back to me. I’d been removed from the waitlist and was being offered a slot. I HAD A SHOT AT FORMATION.
I mean, sorry not sorry for the all-caps there. In spite of the weird feeling I initially got from Formation, I’m super duper pump-xcited to be signing on with them. Pathrise focuses a bit more on the job search/resume optimization than on the actual learning and mentorship that Formation offers. I mean, with Formation Ima be learning all the Data Science & Algorithm stuff I’ve been struggling to self-learn over the past three months, and there’s also a real-live code base I can dig my grubby little fingers into, and mentorship and mock interviews (well, Pathrise has that too, I think) and ALL OF IT!
Have I mentioned I’m excited?
So, I’ve signed the contract and gotten my ISA agreement approved through Leif, and now I’m just refreshing and refreshing my email for the next onboarding steps/access to the platform stuff, since onboarding begins today. (I did at least get an email this morning with a questionnaire to fill out.) Learning begins in earnest next Monday! I hope to document it here without giving away all of Formation’s trade secrets and getting the pants sued off my body.
Oh, and I should add — in addition to being excited, I’m also hella scared. What if this was all a mistake? Accepting me, I mean. What if I can’t hack it? Most people Formation accepts have at least a few years of actual on-the-job experience. I’m just a lowly bootcamper with a very spotty knowledge of linked lists and binary tree searches.
But yes. I can hack it. Failure isn’t an option. I know without a doubt that I’m going to have some rough days ahead — days where I’m crying into my pillow and I can’t nap because I’m stuck on a problem. That’s coding, baby — the exact thing happened to me during Catalyte, and at least now I have the foreknowledge that it does happen. I’m making a playlist now to help combat those highs and lows, and I’m remembering not to take it home with me.
Today is truly the first day of the rest of my life. The first step toward a long and fulfilling career. Something like that. I’m excited to begin.
mins
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