Allow Yourself to Fail | Web Development Graduate Spotlight

MEET MICHELE

Michele Rawlins of Part-time Web Development Evening Cohort 11

“There is that moment for each of us when we decide we are in control of our destiny,” laughs Michele Rawlins of Web Development Cohort Evening 11. “For me, that moment came later in life.” After a career in customer service, Michele decided it was time for a career change. “I have always liked computers and would laugh that I never met a program I didn't like,” she says. “That passion carried over when I was asked to help with a website for my daughter's travel soccer club.”

As Michele started to explore her options to learn coding, a friend told her about Nashville Software School (NSS). “I took a Jumpstart class and was hooked,” she smiled. Once she decided that NSS was the right bootcamp for her, Michele applied for a part-time web development course and never looked back.

THE NSS EXPERIENCE

During her time at NSS, Michele shared that she was thankful for all the class work that didn’t give her much time to dwell on everything happening around her in 2020.“The other students and the instructors helped to keep us grounded and focused,” she recalls.

Learning to code isn’t an easy task. Michele often found that her code wouldn’t work completely when she ran it the first time. “You eventually get past that,” she shares. And get past it, she did, by understanding that in this field, you learn by making mistakes. That’s why Michele shares with future NSS students that failure is all a part of the process - “Allow yourself to fail, over and over. It helps to build a solid foundation for your successes.”

CAPSTONE PROJECTS

For her front-end capstone project, Michele built Hurst Family, an application that stores her family’s heritage, stories, and memories. Members of the family may upload photos, stories, and memories to the application where they can all access and share in their family heritage. Michele built Hurst Family using React.

Gettin Fit is Michele’s back-end capstone project she built using React, ASP.NET MVC, C#, and SQL. The application is a fitness tracking application that was inspired by her own fitness journey throughout the course of her time at NSS. Gettin Fit allows users to record their daily caloric intake, workouts they do weekly, and even upload before and after photos to record their personal progress.

HIRE MICHELLE

Since graduating, Michele has been creating a website for a local company as well as looking for opportunities as a full stack web developer. “My end goal is to be able to work from any coffee shop in the world,” she smiles. “It may take a couple of years, but that’s my goal.”

Learn more about Michele by visiting her LinkedIn profile or listening to her podcast!

Check out all the recent grads at Web Development Cohort Evening 11's class website and hear the graduates share their experience at NSS and capstone projects in their podcasts below.