You will be expected to put in at least 15-25 hours of work per week (depending on experience) during Phase 0, which will last for the next 9 weeks until you start Phase 1 on site.
You are now starting Unit 1. Phase 0 is divided into three Units. Each Unit is three weeks long.
DBC is a fine balance between taking responsibility for your own education, tracking your own progress, exposing your needs and ignorance to your teachers, and also being supported and held accountable by us. You’re learning this balance in Phase 0, and it might get confusing or frustrating at times but that’s all part of the process. Learning it here, during Phase 0, is what will help you maintain that balance during your 9 weeks at DBC.
You can track your own progress by checking in to see if you’re fulfilling expectations, completing challenges on time, and if you’re able to demonstrate the learning competencies. You will be held accountable by us at certain checkpoints, the most important of which is at the end of Unit 1. You should always feel free to write us and ask for more orientation and guidance.
We’d like to make what we mean by objectives and expectations as clear as possible:
You are expected to attend all guided pairing sessions. Please see Guided Pairing Sessions for more help and details.
You are expected to pair with a peer a number of times each unit. See Peer-Pairing Sessions for more information.
###Submissions You will be asked to submit your challenges at the end of each week. They are due each Sunday at 11:59pm.
Completing challenges does not mean that you have the right answer, the perfect code, or the best explanation. It is your own, honest, best attempt at tackling the challenge using the process we defined (pseudocode, code, refactor, reflect), and we are most concerned with how quickly you can learn, not the "right" answer.
If you are starting as a bashful beginner, your attempts may not even yield a working solution. This is OK. The most important thing we need to see is your engagement, your dedication to learning the material. If your solution ends up being 30 lines of pseudocode and you don't know where to begin, make a comment saying where you are stuck and submit it. Then reach out to your cohort mates to see if anyone has solved the challenge and pair with them.
The objectives and challenges for each unit are not suggestions, and they are not optional. These are expectations that we have of you in order for you to succeed and thrive during Phase 0, which will determine whether or not you’ll thrive during phases 1-3 at DBC.
We expect you to satisfy your objectives on time, which means completing the week’s assignments and challenges by the following Sunday at 11:59pm. If for any reason you cannot submit all of the challenges by that day, you need to contact your Phase 0 Facilitator. See Contacts
If you are not meeting these objectives and we do not know why, we start assuming one of two things:
- You are having trouble with the content and are unable to learn quickly enough to satisfy the objectives.
- You are not committed to Phase 0 and something has changed regarding your commitments to DBC and your learning.
In either of these cases if we cannot clear with you what’s going on and give you the assistance you need, this indicates to us that you might not be a good fit for DBC.
So if the situation persists and you are not satisfying your objectives, not asking for help, and we don’t know your situation, we will review your admittance to DBC and potentially ask you to withdraw or delay your admittance.
We hope this doesn’t sound too harsh or cold, but part of the reason for a more robust and engaged Phase 0 is to identify any problems you might have with DBC and learning our curriculum early, to spare you the pain, cost, and frustration of realizing any of these issues in Phase 1 after you’ve quit your jobs, uprooted, and changed your life.