Graduation Wrap-Up

Why is this important?

This workshop is important because:

The twelve weeks of WDI on campus are rigidly structured, with guidance from teaching teams, outcomes, and producers and with events organized by GA. The most successful WDI graduates continue to set goals and schedules

What are the objectives?

After this workshop, developers will be able to:

• Plan a sprint to structure time.
• List and explain SMART objectives that build toward their larger goals.
• Identify resources, including sources of support, that they will use to accomplish objectives.
• Relate work in WDI to personal and professional growth, especially for interviews.

Where should we be now?

Before this workshop, developers should already be able to:

• Give and receive feedback in a respectful and constructive way.
• Identify opportunities to improve previous projects.
• Plan and develop projects with teams.

Workflow

Create a sprint plan for the next two weeks. Include a mid-sprint status check.

Outcomes Events

1. Immediately add Week 13 Outcomes events to your calendar.

Solidifying and Maintaining Skills

1. What are your remaining areas for improvement, and/or what skills you think you will need to practice in order to maintain them?

2. Write down a list of 2-4 technologies you will review. These should be limited topics you can study as you prepare for interviews.

3. List 1-3 "soft" skills that you will work to develop further.

4. For each techonology or goal, what resources will you use to develop these? Meetups, peer support, online resources?

5. When do you plan to start? How many hours a week will you dedicate to this? Is there someone else in class you’ll track progress with?

6. Create at least two events in your two-week calendar that relate to a goal you just set.

Portfolio & Individual Projects

1. What are your next steps on project 3?

2. Are there any other portfolio pieces that you'd like to talk about and that is 80% complete or more?

3. What will you want to add to/improve on your portfolio site itself?

4. Schedule time to add all of your current portfolio projects to your portfolio site.

5. Schedule time to work on polishing a portfolio project or your portfolio itself.

Group Project(s)

1. Interview classmates to gather at least one thing you can tell perspective employers "my colleagues appreciate ____ about working with me". Write this down.

2. Fork all of your group projects so that you have a copy.

Discuss with your teams:

1. What are your next steps on project 2? Wayfarer? Project 1?

2. Does your group want to meet again and/or continue working on the project together? Some groups will decide to take the project in different directions or allow for less scheduling by working individually on forks.

3. Which past team members will you need to meet with in the next 2 weeks? Schedule those meetings -- when and where will they take place?

Networking

1. Which members of your network will contact, meet with, have coffee with, or generally connect to as a job seeker?

2. What networking events will be helpful to go to?

3. Schedule time to explore alumni slack channels once you have access to the alumni slack. There are existing channels for hackathons, meetups, etc. Also feel free to create events with your classmates/other alumns!

Applications

1. What types of jobs will you apply to first? Fontend? Backend?

2. How do your self-reflections direct your early moves in the job search?

3. What resources will you use to find job openings?

4. Schedule time to seek job postings.

5. Schedule time to complete two job applications.

Exploring New Frontiers (Optional)

1. What new languages/frameworks/tools you want to experiment with?

2. How will you learn more about these topics? Will you use meetups, online tutorials, meet with engineers in your network?

3. When do you plan to start, and how many hours a week will you spend?

4. Create an event in your two-week calendar that relates to a goal you set.

Closing Thoughts

You probably have a busy schedule planned for the next few weeks. Stick to it to keep up your momentum.