Liam Writes – Starting My Apprenticeship
I’ve been a part of the Seaside Creative team for ten months now and I’ve been enjoying creating and maintaining websites as well as working as part of a team. While I started here as part of the government Kickstarter programme, I’m very pleased to say the Directors decided to keep me on as an apprentice and I’m now 3 months into my Software Development apprenticeship with Happy. It was a little bit challenging to get my head around exactly what was expected of me at first, but I’m now feeling more settled and I’m making my way through the course.
The apprenticeship class that I’m in is close-knit which has been great as it provides lots of support. Most of my peers are quite reserved, but I feel like everyone is starting to get to know each other and the communication within the class is starting to get stronger. I have had multiple group training sessions since I started back in May. Some of which include; portfolio workshops and personal development sessions.
The great thing about choosing to study with Happy is that we cover a large range of interesting subjects. The most interesting one so far was about algorithms and the logic involved with them. An algorithm is essentially a set of specific instructions which are used to solve a problem or perform a computation.
My portfolio must consist of 4-5 projects that I carry out over the course of the apprenticeship. All of these projects help me to meet a thorough list of criteria in order to gain the qualification. Not every project has to meet all the criteria (phew!), but across all of my projects, the criteria must be met.
My tutor, Luke, has helped me to set some targets to achieve across the duration of the apprenticeship. The target I’m currently working towards is to learn the PHP language. A coding language that is used in every WordPress website for the theme files which can be edited in the theme file editor.
Although I don’t currently use PHP to build websites, it’s a very useful language to know for troubleshooting. Especially when I have to filter through hundreds of PHP files to find errors!
Happy, my training provider, has given me access to Codecademy Premium which is great. So I’m currently working through a course on there to learn PHP and I can safely say it’s really boosted my understanding of the language, as well as how to use it more effectively.
So far the apprenticeship is going well and I’m finding the group training sessions very informative and engaging. The course as a whole is very well structured, despite it being completely online – a barrier some training providers may struggle with.
Keep your eyes peeled for more updates from me as I continue my learning journey at Seaside Creative.