An overview of what's been going on in Fullstack Foundations Week 2-4 and the big presentation with Goldman Sachs. 🚀

Fullstack Foundations is the prework course for Fullstack Academy.

I have been quite the busy bee.To the point where it’s actually nothing like the sweet picture above. It’s more like this:

So I’m taking a break and writing about how I’ve become the annoyed bee depicted above. It’ll allow me to destress for some strange reason.Since this is going to be a ridiculously long post (playing catch up here), I’ve broken it into sections:

1. The Rant
2. The Big Presentation
3. The Foundations
4. The Numbers
5. The Journey So Far

Rant

For Weeks 2 and 3, I had to fervently split my time between working on Fullstack Foundations and preparing a big presentation for Goldman Sachs.But that’s not all. Otherwise, I’d still be the first bee. As of now, I also have to handle the following:

1. Finalizing the website and designing a logo for my first ever official client, Ameot
2. Studying for that silly standardized exam (sadly, no - I’m actually talking about the GRE).
3. Taking an online summer course that is a total waste of time but I need the course to graduate as a CS major (the course is CSC 120 which is basically required for all students and learn the ins and out of useful things like Microsoft Office, PowerPoint, & Excel, among other things). A real joy since I have not seriously used any Microsoft products (besides Skype) since the 9th grade.
4. Staying caught up with Silicon Valley.

Thankfully, once summer hits, my only focus will be Fullstack (assuming I pass the assessment - I suck at those), the GRE, and that summer course. Not bad.

The Big Presentation

I was selected as one of 3 finalists to represent BrooklynCupcake for the 10,000 Small Businesses Student Challenge through Goldman Sachs. I was one out of 9 students presenting since there were 3 students for the three different small businesses.This implied that I had to create a 5-minute presentation addressing the business challenge BrooklynCupcake wanted to solve.Creating the right presentation can take a whole lot of time (it totally did) and I ended up getting a cold from trying to work too hard (at least that’s what my mum claims). I even still had that cold when I was presenting, but I lucked out and even though I had this sketchy cold voice the day after the presentation, I managed a softer sexier cold voice the day of.Regardless, the hard work paid off and I was selected as the winner for the BrooklynCupcake category!This was the final submission I presented.https://youtu.be/fZ1iTIHHXmE

You can view my entry submission as well.

With all that being said, what stood out for me the most throughout the entire trip was how everyone got to work on 200 West Street. The Goldman Sachs building/tower is huge so what everybody does is enter through the first floor, take an elevator to the 11th floor (the Sky Lobby) and then from there, they have several different elevators they can use to get to the other floors. There was an elevator hallway for Floors 12–14 for instance and then another for Floors 30–40 and so on and so forth.

Everyone was so used to all the elevators and there were so many people just packing inside the next available elevator. It felt like something exciting was always about to happen but at the same time, I felt a lot like a sardine.Needless to say, I learned a lot about what kind of environment I’d like to work in for the future. I have just never been into very big crowds… or (sigh) business suits.Anyways, I’m going to use all $5K of what I earned to pay for the Fullstack Academy tuition, which is going to cover roughly half of it all.

Foundations

For Part 2 (or Week 2) of Foundations, which was twos week ago (holy crap!), I did end up finishing the “Guessing Game”, which was a lot of fun.

You’re welcome to play the game at fvcproductions.github.io/Guessing-Game.

But now this week is all about Part 4, the last part, the finale, the end game. I still have a lot of crap to do but I have been able to reach some conclusions.

• I don’t really enjoy Chalkers as a teacher on Treehouse. I’m sorry, it may be the British accent, it may not be.
• As I’ve stated before, Fullstack doesn’t f**** around with their pre-work. Well, now that statement is a conclusion.

The Numbers

I’m feeling statistically inclined so I’m going to share some of the more technical aspects of my experience so far. Mind you, this is more for my personal benefit than anything so I can look back and (hopefully) see how I’ve improved.

Cost of Fullstack Academy’s Summer of Code (I’m part of the 1st cohort, y’all!) = $13,680

• 4 Weeks for Foundations
• 11 Weeks and 3 Days On Campus
• 7 * 11 + 3 = 100 Days of Fullstacking!
• Well, technically 100 - 2 * 11 = 78 days of Fullstacking because I get weekends off - yay!
• June 8th to August 26th
• Mondays through Fridays
• 9 AM to 6:30 PM
• 9.5 hours, 78 days
• 741 hours in total
• There’s a $2,000 discount since the original program is $15,680for 13 Weeks On Campus.
• BUT I’m a GIRL! So now it’s $12,680 since ladies all get a $1,000 discount.
• BUT I applied ridiculously early so I got grandfathered into the old tuition (which was $12,500). Thank goodness for that because otherwise I’m pretty sure my parents would have been a lot more resistant. I saved a lot more this way than with the other discounts ($3,180).
• My grand total is now $9,500 for 741 hours of in-person JS learning! So basically $13 per hour. Sounds good to me. That doesn’t include Foundations or Flight either.

So now let’s break that down - what am I REALLY paying for?I’m going to use 4 months as a point of reference since that would include the roughly 3 months of the actual program and then the 1 month of Foundations.

• a Treehouse subscription
• I’m part of the Group plan, and for this year, the group currently has 101 signups.
• So assuming they’re part of the 150 seats plan which is about $19,875 annually (woah), it costs $11 per month per student.
• I actually used to have the student membership which was $9 a month, but it looks like the Group Plan doesn’t want to consider me a student.
• = around $44 in total for 4 months
• a CodeSchool subscription
• It’s $25 per month per person for the Group Plan, which I’m part of.
• = around $100 in total for 4 months
• The Instructors
• The average developer salary is about $80K in NYC so I’ll just guess that’s how much pay their instructors.
• So with that in mind, $80K/12 month = roughly $7K and $7K times 4 months = $28K
• However, realistically speaking, I’m really just spending about half of that 4 months face to face with the instructor, so…
• = around $14K in total for 4 months per instructor
• A Supportive Environment
• Who knows how much that costs?
• Well, what I can do is estimate the cost of the building floor itself which is probably around $250K per year (maybe more). So roughly $21K per month… ergo it’s around $84K in total for 4 months
• However, I don’t take up that much space so realistically speaking we can split that cost by 70 since that’s how many people are usually there at any given time - which turns into…
• = around $1.2K in total for 4 months per instruc11tor
• Other Stuff
• I’m tired of guesstimating but they probably have to worry about the costs for the other software they use (like Learndot whose standard plan is $500/month) throughout the program and snacks/snacks to appease the newbie programmers like myself. We just ❤ snacks and swag.
• Anyways, so going out on a limb here, I’ll say…
• = around $500 in total for 4 months for other stuff

So, with all that, we can calculate how much they’re really spending on each student, like me.

• Treehouse Subscription $44
• Code School Subscription $100
• The Instructors $14K
• A Supportive Environment $1.2K
• Other Stuff $500 Total $15,844

Yeah, that looks about right. I got a good deal! 😄HOLD ON NOW. That doesn’t include living and eating and extra expenses.

• Subway for 3 Months - $350
• Living with Tio Victor & Tia Ceci - IDK yet
• Food - $3,500 for 4 months

So, in total, the program is going to cost me around $14K, give or take.Now when this all over, I’ll abe able to see if I’m any good at estimating.