Blaizing Academy

I finished Coding Foundations today and it has been wonderful, hard, at times a depressing and rewarding experience. I had a really great cohort and met some amazing people in this program. We did have our first teacher leave halfway through the program, which threw some of us off a little as they were an amazing teacher and then we had to switch to a completely new teaching style. Our new teacher was knowledgeable and a little faster paced than our previous one. I was fine with the fast pace because it works for me, so I enjoyed him as a teacher overall. We did some great projects and work together. 

Financing wise was the hardest for me being an out of state remote student which is why I cannot continue to Immersions (Software Development) unfortunately. If you are an out of state student just be mindful or have the full tuition prepared because you cannot get the school's deferred tuition or other help if you cannot get a loan for both halves of the program. As the program is split into two parts (Coding Foundations and Software Development) you can be approved for a Climb loan for the first half and not approved for the second, leaving you with no certification or job assistance and a loan to pay back. If you're in state they have many options and resources available to help you. 

In the end it was a rewarding experience and I learning a lot. I am grateful for this experience and I'm excited to continue my journey on a slightly different path than I intended! We had some student services employees taking the class with us and they are phenomenal people so I know students are in good hands when entering immersions and beyond! Thank you to everyone who put up with my silliness you are the best. I may have to visit Indiana someday because you guys represented so well!

I was a student in the full-time cybersecurity program. It was highly intense, and extremely fast paced. You have to learn how to learn quickly, and place priority on classes. For the full-time classes, it may not be possible at all to work while taking these classes, it's that intense. You have to be fully mentally, physically, and emotionally prepared to invest everything possible, but it is possible. I had amazing support from instructors, amazing classmates, and awesome support from career services after graduation. Earned my CompTIA Network+ and Security+, and lots of amazing hands-on training and practice. I job hunted for about 6-8 weeks after graduation and ended up getting an amazing position directly from a suggested listing that I got thru their career services department. You won't necessarily have a job right out the gate, but keep applying, and take any networking opportunities thru the school that you can. They help immensely! I went from working landscaping and customer service jobs, to working on IT and Cybersecurity roles for a major international open wheel racing team. This was less than 6 months after looking at the website and thinking "This might be kind of cool" and requesting more info on applying to attend. Never in a million years would I have thought this was possible. It's not a do all end all tech education. They don't mean or intend it to be. But what it does do, is get you far enough ahead and trained, to get you into a role where you can grow and thrive. Everyone's experience may be different, but for me, it literally changed my life, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

EFA was a total shock. I’ve been in a few bootcamps before, and they all were like “here’s the book, good luck.” EFA gives you a book and so many other tools. They also give a personal touch. Every Instructor is personally invested in you and your growth. You just don’t see that in other programs. It’s a fast pasted environment, but if you need it to slow down, your instructors make the time to help. The CompTIA information is out there, you can get that anywhere. The people make EFA! EFA saved me. Saved me from a life of complacency. EFA helped me grow as a person, as a techie. I have the ability to strive for goals that I didn’t know were possible for me. EFA has helped make a better life for my family. For that I will be forever grateful. From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU EFA!

Eleven Fifty Academy changed my life, and I would tell everyone I know.   After graduating college and failing to get into a graduate program, I was left working at a liquor store for ten dollars an hour.   After months and months of searching, I finally landed a job using my degree, and I was more miserable than I thought possible. One morning, I woke up to an email saying I had been laid off. My wife and I were devastated.   Two months later I had still not found a job and things were going to get desperate.    I stumbled upon the EFA (Eleven Fifty Academy) website by pure accident. Having been a technology hobbyist, I thought, it was at least worth a shot. Why not try and break into a field with a higher entry level salary than my degree?   After discussing it with my wife, I made the decision to go ahead and take a leap of faith and go through with it. Nine months later, I would do it again in a heartbeat.    Admissions: Carolyn was my advisor and answered every question I could think of and then some. She even gave me her personal cell phone number in case I was unable to get ahold of her for some reason. She walked me through the entire process with a smile in her voice and a helping hand whenever I was unsure of what I needed to do.  There was a hang up getting some transcripts that were needed and not for a second did she falter or become impatient with me. Funding was explained to me professionally and carefully, leaving me feeling comfortable with the journey I was about to embark on, as I could not pay up front for my class. Once everything was said and done with the admissions process, I was a little sad that I would not be speaking to Carolyn again, since she was such a wonderfully pleasant introduction to my experience at EFA.   Funding: Part of my tuition was paid for by the Cares Act, and this was a significant reason as to why I choose EFA as my bootcamp in the first place. The rest of it was covered by a PISA agreement, which was something I had never heard of previously, but upon its explanation made a tremendous amount of sense to me and added to my confidence in my choice of bootcamps. Cares Act is over, I believe, however, I know for certain that EFA has a variety of options to help students fund their education.    Class: I went through the Full Time Cybersecurity program. Wow. Just wow.     I was assigned pre-work to do the week before class even started! I thought to myself, "Crazy, class hasn't evens started and I am already being bossed around." Boy, was I glad that I was. The intensity of class was nothing like I had experienced before. During Gold Badge, we focused on material covered on the CompTIA Net+ certification. Come to find out, this was just teaching us the vocabulary to operate in the security sphere of IT. Coming from a place where I did not know the difference between a Switch and a Router, this was the best way we could have been introduced to the material. Since this was the foundation of everything to come, hitting it hard and early helped me, personally, prepare and understand how to perform in class. During Blue Badge, the Cybersecurity portion of the program, we were given new instructors for new lessons and were introduced to TryHackMe, a tool that is used to practice hands-on cybersecurity scenarios and situations in a learning-friendly environment. This helped give us opportunities to practice things we learned during the theoretical portion of class. One of the Learning Instructors even held out of hours meet ups to go over security procedures and walk students through "boxes", security challenges, which furthered our practice and real-world understanding of these concepts. Finally, in Red Badge, training was over and we, the students, were thrown into the mix of a day-in-the-life of a real-world SOC analyst. In Red Badge, instead of classwork we had work-work. We were put into "The Range", a simulator that allows us to experience the "14 Worst Days of a SOC Analysts Life". Here we were let loose and had to defend a corporate network from a multitude of cyber-attacks, with the end of the day having to draft a report for the days' work, as practice for what is to come in the real world. It is the closest most people will get to engaging in a real-time cyber-attack, and we got to train on it as students!! Class time though was seriously fast paced and chalk full of information, and if you were not careful, you could easily fall behind. Personally, I think Net+ could have used another weeks' worth of class time, as it is a ton of material to cover.     There were times when classmates and I would talk about concern over the pace of things.  
Curriculum: All the material covered is Industry Standard. I have no problems with what was taught or why. Net+/Sec+ are entry level certification within the industry and attempting to study and train for them myself would have cost years of my life, time that I just did not have. Being in an environment that structured the learning in a time-sensitive manner helped me more than I ever would have thought possible. It is hard to argue with what is being taught, when what is being taught is what is used throughout the industry. Standard certifications mean just that, "This is what is expected of you". Which made decisions easier for me. Now I do not have to wade through the tons of certifications out there that are similar, but not the same, AND there is someone there to walk me through things I don't understand? This part was an easy decision for me. They instruct what people with the jobs want. Simple as that.   

Instructors: Like in school, not every instructor is the best teacher you have ever had, however, there is a theme with the instructors that I thought was great and really helped give me faith in the program. Regardless of the teaching experience or tech experience, all the Instructors and LA's I had were excited to be there and, in a position, to help others transition into tech from outside the sphere. One of my LA's was a former Green Bay Packer, a pro-football player, and every time I had a question, he would pull me into a breakout room and walk me through it until I understood what's what. Another instructor had been teaching Gold Badge for almost two years and was so incredibly knowledgeable I could not ask a question he did not have an answer for. Then I met MJ and Hunter. These two men know more about information security than I did about breathing, the best part, I got to learn from them. I had a great interaction with every instructor, and LA I had the opportunity to meet with. Life is imperfect and I understand that this cannot be the case for everyone all the time. This is just my experience.     Job Support: I reached out to my Career Services Advisor, Niki, the day my class got into Red Badge and was immediately blown away by how helpful she was. Again, I know not everyone has had this experience, but I spoke to Niki once or twice a day for those first two weeks and every other day after that until I had three positions wanting to ask me for second interviews. Here is where my story may differ from most. I was asked to apply for a position as a Cybersecurity Research Learning Assistant at EFA. Once I submitted my application, Niki told me she could no longer help me, as I was currently being considered by the company she worked for. This made total sense to me, and I saw no reason to hold it against her, and as she went above and beyond to help me, I had a fantastic experience with career services.     Things are never perfect and going to an online bootcamp is no exception. There were miscommunications and things I found to be laughably silly, but in the end, I graduated from the bootcamp as part of the top of my cohort, having been awarded the Leadership Core Value Award, being able to walk into a job teaching other people skills to change their lives.     Currently I work as an Operations and Marketing Consultant for Eleven Fifty helping to carry on the mission of teaching a million people to code in ten years and helping to develop tech talent in the state of Indiana.     Eleven Fifty Academy changed my life. 

I came to Eleven Fifty Academy hoping to “transform” or “launch” myself into technology because it is a rapidly growing field. I began on September 13th, 2021, and had no coding experience except for a semester of basic programming in high school. I knew it would be difficult to learn to code, but the way they advertised it to me was I’d feel comfortable enough to go against the job applicants that came out of an undergraduate CompSci program upon graduation. This was not the case. The graduates that successfully landed themselves into the career advertised had prior experience programming in frontend technologies, and the other taught software to students for a decade. They were consistently top of the class for good reason.

I never missed a day of class and worked hard to understand the concepts. However, the lectures were not interactive and quickly moved on to other concepts. It would have been easier to focus on furthering this understanding via self-study, but all the practice was graded and actually went to whether or not you pass to the next badge. Practice makes perfect, and my practice was not perfect. A “firehose” of information is what they called it and it truly felt that way. If you did not understand the concept right away, you quickly fell behind. My instructor would reassure the class that “you’ll understand it eventually;” my understanding is that if the fundamentals aren’t there, how do you expect to even attempt the advanced concepts? My instructor was also infamous for being late 10-30 minutes and sometimes not even knowing what we were doing outside of lecture. We’d be in a Zoom room, but where would my instructor be?

I fell behind (as did others) because the emphasis is on showing the information, not making sure everyone understands completely. Often times there would be 3 or 4 students that would be done already when there’s a week left to go on an assignment. Not a level playing field by any means. Each project was tough because you had to teach yourself the concepts and develop frontend and backend programming all in a short timespan (1-2 weeks). Some projects were really well done by students, but with a lack of understanding for a significant portion of the class, these are supposed to go into a portfolio to showcase to employers. Many ended up redoing them or scrapping them entirely after meeting rubric criteria. I crawled through the finish line and relied on my instructors for lots of help just so I could obtain the certification to show for my past three months in the Academy.

Within the first month the second instructor (there were two main ones, two learning assistants) left to go work on some other part of the company. So that was great. By the time we were in our last month (note that our class size was now at 15 or so, we started with 30~) Career Services had people leave their team AND Eleven Fifty Academy accepted many more students that they could not handle at the time. Now it’s 50 days since graduation (when they said 80% of their graduates are placed in jobs), and my personal career advisor is leaving Eleven Fifty Academy. So now I’ll get someone new at some point in the future. I was surprised of this announcement because my advisor starts a new position this upcoming Monday and I heard today. Shouldn’t we have someone new to go to right away? At this point I’ve accepted that EFA has failed to prepare myself and others for a web development career (only speaking for some classmates in my cohort), so I have resorted to self-studying and finding a job outside of this field because I feel unqualified.

 I found out about EFA in the middle of 2021 when a lot of things were uncertain in this world. I had recently purchased a new home, adopted a wonderful dog, and was helping my family during a tough time involving cancer- so I already had a lot on my plate. I decided to go to EFA due to a need to change things as well as pivot to a new opportunity to help people.

EFA delivered in full. While I am not the best student, I had a drive to learn and a need to help others (as well as a need for a job, but I digress) that I was able to fully form into ideas and possibilities for my future I never thought possible. The instructors, the structure, the classmates, and the follow-up services with EFA have been amazing and I wouldn't be gladfully employed in the tech world now without their generosity, empathy, and compassion for getting people in jobs that they can see themselves thriving in.

Thank you for everything EFA, you are my superhero. 

Eleven Fifty Academy took me from a beginner with no experience in IT to a novice Cyber Security professional. Their methods mirror those of a shepherd leading a flock of eager learners to a career in IT. They are extremely friendly and knowledgeable throughout the entire process. Upon completion of the whichever course you choose, they have a dedicated team waiting to help place you in the respective industry. After graduating from Eleven Fifty Academy in just a few months, I secured my first job as a Cyber Security Analyst with the excellent help from their placement team. 

I was able to successfully change careers after graduating from the Full Stack Web Development bootcamp through Eleven Fifty, and would highly recommend it for anyone looking to break into the tech industry and wanting to learn how to code. Through the program we we're able to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, along with back end technologies like node and express. The teachers we're great, and the office hours we're really helpful when having questions (which was all the time lol). Although there are a lot of great resources available to learn on your own, having access to the teachers and learning assistants was invaluable, and it was great experience working on group projects with other classmates. The career services department will also help with your resume, LinkedIn profile, job search, etc. 

Eleven Fifty Academy absolutely changed my life. I was a truck driver who hated trucking. I left trucking in October of 2020 to go through the EFA Cybersecurity course. The instructors were amazing, answering any and every question I could throw at them (and there were a lot of questions). They were knowledgeable and patient with me and helped me to become the Cybersecurity professional that I am today. When I left high school over 10 years ago now, I thought I was stupid and incapable of learning anything quickly. EFA showed me that that was not true at all. Not only did I excel at their courses, I then went on to pursue my Bachelor's Degree in Cybersecurity. I even managed to make it into a sort of Junior Pentesting position where I am able to learn and train on the job in order to become a full-on penetration tester. When I say that EFA changed my life, I mean I went from a job and a life that I hated to having a career that I love, more confidence in myself and my abilities than I have ever had, and a team of friends and now coworkers who are always willing to help me out with learning and continuing to grow.

2020 was a difficult year for a lot of people. I spent 6 years building my career with Sprint and had managed to climb the leadership ladder but the merger dissolved my role. I then took my talents to ATT and started climbing building a career there but COVID hit fast and hard and my role was also dissolved. I felt so lost and aimless, I felt like I was going back to the drawing board but had no idea where to even start. I decided to do one of the scariest things I have ever done, and I decided it was time for a career change. I wanted to go back to school but I did not want to spend years in school and I also did not have the funds. I decided to take a chance on a boot camp and researched for days on the best bootcamps in the country. I found Eleven Fifty Academy on google and began researching, they offered a free intro course which was not offered by many others. I signed up for the intro and they were completely honest with us from the start. They told us it would be hard, and we would have to put in the work but that they would provide us with the tools and curriculum to succeed. I signed up that same day and for the next 3 months I was emersed in cyber security courses. The instructors were very well versed in both network and security and we able to keep us engaged and learning every day. It was no easy by any means, there were a lot of late nights and struggles but they provided you with the support and extra help. They gave you tool after tool to help you learn and if you were struggling, they took the time to try different ways of explaining the subject until it was clear. After I was able to pass both my network and security plus certifications we were given access to a cyberbit range where we were able to put everything we had learned with real world attacks! It was such a blast and so rewarding to see it all put together. While in the cyberbit range I got a change to work with the career placement team and work on my resume and linked in. My career advisor even helped me discover on what I wanted from my next career. I started applying for different roles and within 14 days of graduation I had two offers, my advisor then helped me think through the pro’s and cons of each and eventually I was able to make a decision and that has lead me to my first role in IT. I am an On-site technician and I am l-o-v-i-n-g IT! I learn something new every day and for the first time in a long time I feel passion for my job again. I went into the program having 0 experience in the field of IT and now I am working to build my future in this field and Eleven Fifty gave me the super strong foundation to build on. The future is bright and I can not wait to see where this journey takes me.