sf_bay_bridge
Sometimes things are black and white in San Francisco

I was dismissed from App Academy for failing all my exams on the 28th of November 2016. Ugh…

I am writing to inform you that due to your performance on the retake assessment it is our obligation to dismiss you from the course.
–App Academy

I tried as hard as I could to get good and pass the tests, but it wasn't good enough.

After two retakes on the first two tests, I could never get the correct results on more than 85% of the specifications. Without exception, I found myself at the bottom of the class.

It really hurts, but I feel like it's actually for the best. After the fourth examination, I wrote an email to my pod leader and let her know that I was leaving the building to save them the headache of asking me to leave. The last two weeks of my life had been spent in that classroom from 8:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M.

For the next four hours I walked around San Francisco as my mood fluctuated between devastated defeat to excitement for a new chapter. It kept going back and forth. Now a few days later, I'm comfortable with it all. Here's what I learned.

sf_tower

Things I Learned:

A LOT about Programming

App Academy (and Hack Reactor*) are excellent schools. They boil down the learning process and teach a lot of very challenging concepts quickly. Even though I'm happy I'm no longer attending a bootcamp, I wouldn't tell anyone not to do them. They are great. I just wasn't the right fit.

Office Life is Not for Me

My body started deteriorating in the first two weeks. Since being dismissed, five days have passed and I've gone to CrossFit three times. I'm back to feeling strong and healthy. The first day back, I was in very sad condition.

Since being dismissed I've spent the day outside, I've gone to movies in the middle of the day and I've taken sales calls whenever I wanted to. It was great to have this freedom locked up for a pair of weeks so I could reconnect with the value of freedom.

sf_sky_scraping_buildings3

My Current Position is Great

So my friends and I run a podcast production company where we are very free to do work we care about while traveling the world and never stepping foot in an office.

Spending two weeks in an office learning very dense material helped me to realize that I loved the position we have built for ourselves at Freedom Podcasting. Before the class, I had a magical view of working in a tall sky-scraping building with people that are highly sought after. After two weeks in App Academy, I'm happy to not be in an office anymore.

Programming Skills are Hard to Learn

On my last day at a/A we learned SQL in a day. It's impressive that a/A has such an intense learning curve, but I feel like I'm happy to slow down a little bit and learn these skills at a deeper level.

Gender Neutral Bathrooms?

I'm not a big fan of gender neutral bathrooms or announcing our gender pronouns as a new way of communication.

I'm skeptical about organizations where social/political initiatives are institutionally forcing people to speak in a specific way. There was a great podcast with Jordan Peterson where he discusses the dangers of this movement.

sf_sky_scraping_buildings2

That's it

I'm really sad I failed out. But I'm going to spend my time going to programming conferences, learning different technologies, lifting weights and growing Freedom Podcasting.

App Academy is an excellent program. It was just too intense for me at this point in my life.

Thank you for the run a/A -> Keep up the great work.

sf_sky_scraping_buildings