We sat down, virtually of course, with one of our learners, Iana Alekseeva. Community is a big part of the learning experience here at Qwasar. We wanted to give you an idea of the depth and breadth of who is in our community. This interview is a part of ongoing learner interviews of our Qwasar students. Read more to learn about the life of a learner here at Qwasar!
Personal
Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you are from, what's your educational background?
I am from Moscow, Russia and I have a Master’s Degree in Public Administration. I worked as a travel coordinator for 5 years in Moscow. I have no technical background at all. It’s really interesting how my life has changed over the past few years from a career in public administration and travel services to a technical track in full stack development. I am currently based in California.
What are you passionate about?
Right now I am passionate about learning. It is amazing, that during our lives we can change our career paths as many times as we want, and all of this knowledge can be useful in the future. Right now, besides coding, I try to know myself better, so I love to read books about the human brain, body and psychology. Also, I practice self-management, and try to create new habits for myself. For example, this year I am going to create one good habit per month. I’ve already started to practice meditation, and I get up at 7 a.m. every day and I am very proud of myself. For the past few years, I have tried to implement all of these habits at the same time and this has never worked for me because I just forget about it a few days in. This time I create new checklists for only one habit and focus on it for a month. After that period of time I try to continue without any notifications and it works for me! Furthermore, I want to learn more about UI design as I think it will help me in coding a lot too.
Where do you want to work one day?
I don’t know for sure right now but if we talk about big companies, I would like to work for Apple. I like what they do and their designs are amazing. Even my grandparents can use their products. I would be grateful to learn from them. Also, I like LinkedIn as a company. I love their educational section and it is one of the best resources to professionally connect with people. If we talk about startups or small companies, I would like to work somewhere that people create useful products, whether in education, healthcare, or a human resources organization. It is amazing that if you can code, you can work everywhere you want. It opens up so many doors.
What do you want to do in the future?
For now, I think that I want to be a Front End Developer, who will be a part of a team, who create convenient products for people.
Coding
Tell us a little bit about your journey to Qwasar
When we moved to Denmark from Moscow, I couldn't speak English very well or Danish at all. I wasn't sure what I was going to do next. I couldn’t be a travel coordinator in a foreign country, so I just decided to change everything. I had started coding with HTML and CSS. Knowing what I know now, it is hard to call them programming languages. And I learned very basic things, but I was hooked and I enjoyed that. After 6 months of trying to do projects with HTML and CSS, I decided to learn a true programming language. I took Javascript, and it was extremely difficult for me. My brain was broken. I thought that I would never understand programming. It was challenging, but I went through this day by day, one step at a time. Then, I found a remote job in Russian as a Junior Frontend Developer. It was such a strange experience because I had to develop so many skills that were completely new for me and every day it felt like I was an imposter and I couldn't understand very basic things. I was working there for about 6 months, and then we moved to the USA. I quit that position, but continued to study in the USA.
In Silicon Valley, they had the "42" school and as soon as we moved, I decided to go to their Piscine. It was one month of intensive learning involving C language within the school with almost 300 students. Engaging with C language is very hard if you have no technical background at all. It was very challenging. Unfortunately, I didn’t pass their Piscine the first time, so I decided to go there again. During those two attempts, I found many friends and I lived in dorms for the first time in my life. As time passed, I finally understood the C basics.
But after January, the pandemic started and 42 didn’t take me again. I still needed guidance in learning programming, so I applied to Qwasar, as recommended by a friend. I tried to learn programming by myself, but I just didn’t know what to do next, what I could do, and what I couldn't. There were so many programming things around me and I was completely lost. Qwasar helped me a lot. I started in April and in less than one year, I started to feel much better about coding and much better about myself too.
Tell us a little bit about your journey within Qwasar, any struggles you have had and how you have overcome them.
I started at Qwasar in April and the first thing I worked on was C language, again. Because of 42, I knew some C basics, but making real projects in C was alot different. Every time I started a new project at Qwasar, I thought that if I couldn't understand the task, how could I finish this project? Trying to google my questions wasn't easy. Taking it step by step, and practicing a lot, I was better able to understand what they wanted from me and I made it through.
One of the hardest parts was how to ask questions from people. I was afraid to sound stupid. But, during my learning at Qwasar I understand that today, you may not know some things, but tomorrow you can explain these concepts to someone else and it's a great way to learn new things. I have learned so much during this year and I love this program.
What have you learned about yourself while at Qwasar?
I have learned that I can be very stubborn, and if I can't understand new things, it doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes you think that you will never achieve your goals, that you are lazy, or even stupid. But if you try to practice discipline, get motivation from friends, from Qwasar, from anybody — it will help you. And tomorrow you can explain the problem to others and everything will be fine. There is nothing wrong if you cannot understand some of the concepts. Qwasar helped me to learn a lot of new things about people, about projects, about learning and about myself and I appreciate it.
What has been your favorite project so far at Qwasar?
I can’t tell that I love C, because it is a hard language for me. But my favorite project is written in a C language, called MY_TAR. Making this project, I learned about how file systems work on our computers, and how file information is stored. Everything in this project was like magic to me, but now I understand it’s not magic, it's just logic. Every time I create some new things and I don’t know what to do next, I remember that project and I think that if I was able to do it, I can achieve whatever I want in programming.
Tell us about one of your biggest successes while learning to code
I stopped being afraid to ask stupid questions. I think it is one of my greatest successes. And I finished a lot of projects, of course, and I am glad that I did. Every one of them was useful for me and for my progress towards to become a front end developer.
What is your favorite programming language thus far and why?
I am not sure I can answer this question yet because I don’t have a deep understanding of every language that I have experienced. For example, I love JavaScript, because I know that I can use it for frontend, so I can already program something with it. And I know that Ruby is a great language too, which I can use for backend. C language is a little bit mysterious, but if you can understand it, you can understand what is going on under the hood of many other languages. It’s cool that I took not just one language at Qwasar, so I can see the differences and I can achieve whatever I want with any of the languages.
What is the importance of learning data structures in your opinion?
For me, it works like the basics, because I don’t have a technical background and it is very important information for me to understand the foundation. When you try to handle data structures, it helps to organize the programming logic in your head. And I think that if you try to learn programming, you have to learn about the data structures first, such as how I did at Qwasar.
What encouragement would you have for others starting out their coding journeys and careers?
I think that a lot of people are very stressed if they can’t do something fast or well, or if they don't understand something right away. I would say to not be afraid to try many times before you can achieve even small goals. While you are learning, you will try many times, you will fail a lot and that is normal. But one day, you will realize that you can understand very difficult things and you can help others to understand them too. Keep going and keep trying. It is the key.
We are thankful for Iana's time in developing this interview and sharing her insights and story. We are looking forward to sharing more learner interviews in the upcoming months.
