Personal Life vs. a Professional Pivot: Why You Don’t Have to Choose

There’s a paradox at the center of some bootcamps. Here’s what we mean: say someone wants to switch their profession because their current one doesn’t give them enough time to take care of their young kids.

Well, if they don’t have enough time to be a parent, then they certainly don’t have 40 extra hours a week (or more) to dedicate to an intensive, unforgiving study schedule. Basically, the factors that make this person want to make a change also prevent that change.

But not every bootcamp is going to force you into this catch-22. In fact, for some — TripleTen included — you don’t have to choose between seeing to your current responsibilities and working toward a better future. 

Let’s talk about that.

What a part-time bootcamp looks like

Some bootcamps were actually crafted to be worked on part-time. That means that instead of spending 40 hours or more on learning a new tech trade, you can instead spend around 20 hours a week. So no, you don’t have to commit yourself to an educational program that would essentially be a second full-time job. If you want to have time to look after your kids, take care of a friend, or just simply have a life, with bootcamps like TripleTen, you can.

However, that’s not to say that the tech knowledge and skills you’re looking to acquire in a part-time bootcamp will naturally flow into your mind as if through osmosis. You’re going to have to put in real, honest study time. The key difference is that with TripleTen, a typical load of 20 hours a week breaks down into roughly three hours per day. And that’s less than the average American spends watching TV.

But that’s not the only way that a part-time bootcamp is designed to be flexible for students of all sorts. In fact, much of the learning is asynchronous. As opposed to in a traditional educational institution where there are lectures, labs, and strict times when you have to be studying, TripleTen allows for you to approach the material when you can. You can shape your bootcamp schedule around the life you’re living — not the other way around.

And you’ll still have live interactions. You’ll have consistent support on our messengers, where our experts and community members are constantly on the lookout for people asking questions or seeking assistance. In addition, our tutors host regular sessions in which they give practical guidance on how the new tech skills can be applied in real-life scenarios, and there are also regular meetings in which you can really dig into any problem you might be having.

All that’s to say that, with a part-time bootcamp, you’ll have the full, supportive, and get-hired education a bootcamp provides, only you won’t have to give up on your life to pursue it.

In more concrete terms

Let’s return to the example of the parent who wants more time with their young kids. Their full-time job asks 40 hours a week from them — 9 to 5 each day. Following that, they commute home and spend time and a meal with their family. Bedtime for the kids is going to come soon enough. After that, there’s still time left in the day.

This is the time in which this hypothetical parent can really dig into a bootcamp, and it’s the way that the very-not-hypothetical Jeremy Laurange managed to find time to master business intelligence analytics.

What I would do is I put the kids to bed and essentially study for around three or four hours each night.

Jeremy Laurange TripleTen grad

In fact, Jeremy even managed to balance his bootcamp studies with a vacation. Now, to be fair, he did submit a project while he was on the beach, but it all just goes to show — if Jeremy could take a vacation and not shirk his fatherly duties all while still keeping up with the bootcamp, balancing your personal life and studies is eminently possible.

If you need more time

But the flexibility doesn’t end there. We know that people need time and brain space to dedicate to things other than the bootcamp. We also know that, well, things happen. That’s why we’ve integrated breaks and extensions into our bootcamp.

So say you need extra time with a subject. Instead of moving on without having properly digested the topic, you can request an extension, during which you review the material presented. This means that even if you need to spend extra time learning something, it doesn’t come at the cost of looking after your kids, for example.

Then, there are breaks. Whereas during extensions, the idea is that you’re reviewing a topic, during breaks, you don’t have to worry about your bootcamp studies at all. After all, real life doesn’t pause because you’ve decided to learn tech. So if something comes up and you need to briefly step away, you have that option.

Jessica Powers was just one student who appreciated this flexibility. While she was in the Quality Assurance (QA) program, a family emergency struck. Naturally, that demanded all of her attention, so she took a brief break from her studies.

It was a huge relief to put things on pause for about a week and a half.

Jessica Powers TripleTen grad

Following her break, she came back, mastered QA, and landed a job in her new field.

Because everyone deserves a chance

There’s one thing we haven’t addressed yet — the why behind it all. The title of this section explains it. People who are only able to study part-time also deserve the chance to master new tech knowledge and land the jobs they want.

That’s the core of our philosophy — everyone should have the opportunity to make the professional pivot into tech. This is what lies behind our emphasis on flexibility, and it’s also what lies behind our lack of enrollment qualifications. A trucker with no college education and a GED instead of a high school diploma might be rejected from another bootcamp. Not with us. In fact, that trucker_{From Trucking to Coding: Dallin Sly’s TripleTen Story} can even learn with us and then become a programmer for his local board of county commissioners.

This is why you don’t have to choose between real life and learning the material to power a new career. Because our bootcamp was, from the ground-up, shaped to work for people just like you.

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