Lavinia: "The part-time course fitted me best because I still wanted to keep doing the work I did"

Published on 24 March 2020

Reading time 3 minutes

Lavinia Chiburțe followed our part-time course in Bucharest, she shares her experience:


What is your background? 

For 11 years, I’ve been active in the non-profit world, starting with a more social-focused work at Save the Children Romania, then doing policy, public participation and community events organisation.

In this field, ‘career path’ is not a concept you operate with necessarily, and there is not a clear distinction between ‘work’ and other life departments :). It becomes who you are. Which lead, in my case, to a big burnout...

Amidst this burnout I’ve discovered programming, and the pleasure of doing focused work, with immediate and clear results. Although kind of frustrating at times - coding -  it still meant dealing with mostly solvable problems. Also, programming brought me back that workflow you can lose yourself in. 

Why did you look into Web Development courses in the first place?

I started fiddling with Web Development a few years back, before any thought of switching careers came to mind, after reading an article on ways to prevent Alzheimer (I thought I showed all the signs, and Google confirmed). 

And then when I officially started learning, the idea of ‘ordinary’ people transitioning to programmers was newer (or at least for me), and the trust that you can actually make it, was more in the dreaming department. So, Web Development seemed more reachable then, with a more visual response of the work you did. 

Also, I had tons of ideas, before learning how to code, with different apps that I thought were great and that the world for sure need them. And all I had to do was learn how to code so I could make them real. 

What attracted you in our part-time course?

The part-time course fitted me best because I still wanted to keep doing the work I did, but also because my learning process is more suited on receiving and understanding information in a longer time-period, rather than getting a big suitcase of knowledge in a short time. 

It took time (and lots of learning) to get my brain to rewire to coding (a process that is still in progress). This is why the part-time’s curriculum and time-line were the best solutions for me. 

How did it work? How did it go for you?

This quote from Brian Holt (that teaches React on Frontend Masters) helped a lot, and describes it best how it went on for me: ‘Programming is a cycle of feeling like an idiot and feeling like the smartest person alive.’ 

Sometimes I went through this cycle a few times a day. 


Now that it's done, how did it change your life? What is your work situation now?

Besides coding skills, I’ve learned a lot about me, and how I learn, it brought more empathy and humbleness. And it feels good, even though I still feel like an idiot most times and I don’t think it will ever go away, coding feels great. 

Recently I’ve said yes to a job as a front-end developer, resigned my previous one, and I’m happy I get to have the chance to do this all day long. 


To whom would you recommend this type of courses?

Everyone that wants to learn how to code, and thinks would benefit more from a longer-time learning process, divided in smaller bits (with lots of learning at home too).  And also, for those that still need to work during the day. 

Interested in learning more on our Part-Time Front-end Course? Check it out, and reach out to us, if you have any doubts!