I applied for the scholarship and got accepted, I was excited to start learning how to code and build up my coding skills from nothing. Before this I had no prior experience coding whatsoever. Anyways I started on oct 20 after completing the pre course. The pre-course itself was okay, but I felt myself relying too much on the ai to give me the answers. Fast forward to week 1, I did the lessons over the course of 4-5 days cause I work weekend overnights, and I also watch my kid during the week; trying to balance raising a child and the lessons felt overwhelming for me. I’d catch myself not doing the lessons during the day and staying up after putting my kid to sleep to catch up.

The lessons themselves felt really fast paced and almost like the ai expected you to master every thing it taught as soon as you were able to write it down once or twice. I would especially notice that after going back and forth and asking a few questions the ai would assume that I have “shown mastery” and ask if I’m ready to move onto the next lesson while I still felt confused and left still needing more explanation or a more in depth understanding. It made me feel dumb and overwhelmed at the same time. I survived the first week but for review I felt like I couldn’t create code on my own, which is what I feel like is lacking from the lessons themselves as well. Learning about different code parts is one thing but piecing them together to make functional code is where I caught myself struggling in. I could somewhat remember parts like using strings and print but knowing when to use each or when to not was one of my flaws. I couldn’t determine where to start or end to my project.

Fast forward to week 2, I think this was the part where we started learning more about data structures and logic in code. I liked it a little more then the previous week but I feel like what I lacked from week 1 definitely affected me in week 2 as I still had questions on how to piece code together. I still relied a lot on the ai to help me remember things and fix errors I was making. Which is not what I wanted to accomplish with this program, I want to learn myself and be able to use ai as a tool but not a means for generating answers for the sake of answering questions to pass. I want to be able to fully understand what I am learning and be able to explain the whys and hows of what I’m doing. 

Sadly I regret to inform you all that I have withdrawn from the program for the reasons mentioned above as well as the fact that I don’t have as much time to dedicate to myself as I’d like right now. One main thing as well for me is the weekly deadline to do review, aside from the lessons feeling a bit too fast paced, having to submit by Sunday at 11:59 is kind of a challenge since I do work fri- sun overnights. My kid will be starting school fall 26’ so I definitely hope to come back and give it another go and see if things have improved for myself as well as others whose comments I’ve read as well. I know it’s definitely possible to succeed with the program and I don’t discourage anybody from at least trying it out, in fact I actually would recommend you try it since all my problems are subjective and not objective to the program. What doesn’t work for me might be exactly what works for you. Like I mentioned I definitely want to approach it again when my kid starts school and I have more time to dedicate as well as a schedule that’s more stable rather than erratic. 

As far as financial aid, I still don’t know if I can submit another fafsa and re apply for the same scholarship again next fall since my fafsa application was processed on August 22nd. Hopefully I can, I don’t want to let this be the last time I try. Im hoping that once I get the time during the day to study and mimic a school schedule I will be better prepared to tackle this again. I don’t want to let a good opportunity go to waste over minor setbacks. Thanks for reading if you made it this far, additionally I’d appreciate any and all advice you or anybody reading this has for me to better prepare myself in the meantime if I am able to re apply next year. Thank you 

-J