Freddie Peake - August 2020 Kozi Graduate

I went to Kozi in August 2020 and had an amazing time and learnt a lot! My history in coding is very short, I had done a small amount at university for a few courses in the languages Java and Python but having not done particularly well on those courses I was basically starting at 0. While at Kozi the teaching was a lot easier to follow than the previous lessons I had had, and I learnt a lot more in a week that I had during two courses.

Further to this, Kozi’s structure allows everyone to get a lot of personal attention, so those who complete the easier tasks more quickly will be assigned more and more challenging tasks, allowing all different levels to constantly be learning. This also helps as the teacher can quickly get to you when you need your program fixed. On my week there was a small group of people who had all studied computer science for years who were particularly accustom to coding, so they were able to go through the more basic exercises much quicker while some of the others (me) would take much longer.

Each session we would learn something new then have time to applying it ourselves to our own webpages we set up. I had so much fun playing around with different aesthetics and elements of the webpages we created and really found that the more I messed around with things the more I learnt. It was a really fun way of doing things. Kozi has really helped my fundamental understanding of how programming works and particularly how different elements of a webpage come together, and which programming languages control each of these elements.

One thing that particularly stood out over the week was the feel of the course, it was always very light-hearted and friendly, even when you are learning some quite technical code. Lucy and her team managed to create a truly homely environment with lots of delicious home cooked meals, games of tennis, some frisbee and endless cards and Perudo.

Since leaving Kozi, Lucy has really been expanding the Kozi community, and partnering with lots of companies and has been hugely helpful with regard to finding internships and putting me in contact with companies. She recently put me in contact with Manifesto Growth Architects, a London based consultancy firm, and after helping adapt my CV and cover letter I was invited for an interview.

I would really recommend this course to everyone really. As technology is only going to become more and more present in our personal and professional lives so a course like this that can begin to give you a handle on how it all works is essential. For those who are already familiar with coding this course will still be able to further your knowledge!