I slept from 1am to 5am for 6 months. I worked full time as a teacher, I was a mom of three, and at night I studied programming. Here's what I learned.
Why I got there
Between 2019 and 2021 I lived an exhausting cycle: I'd learn a little technology, doubt whether it was possible for me, stop, and try again months later. The belief that kept repeating in my head was simple and harsh: "educator, Latina, woman, mom... impossible."
What finally broke that cycle was a weekend as a volunteer at GiveCamp Memphis, in February 2021, building a website for a nonprofit in just two days. I ended up leading that team. That real validation — not a promise, a concrete result — gave me the confidence to commit for real.
The April 2021 decision
In April 2021 I joined a six-month Full Stack bootcamp. I didn't quit my teaching job first. I didn't wait for circumstances to be perfect. My husband also worked full time, and we were still raising our three children.
The real routine, hour by hour
It wasn't balance. It was an intense period, with a clear purpose and an end date.
My day looked like this: get up before dawn to study before going to teach, spend the whole day teaching, get home in the afternoon to take care of my kids, and from 9pm to 1am study and build projects again. Repeat, six days a week, for six months.
The 3 permissions I had to give myself
Sustaining that routine wasn't just discipline — it was giving myself concrete permissions I hadn't given myself before:
Permission to not know everything. I didn't wait to master every concept before moving on to the next. I learned enough to build, and kept going.
Permission to ask for help. I stopped trying to do it completely alone, like in the previous two years. I leaned on the bootcamp community and on my husband to keep the household logistics running.
Permission to redefine "enough". My original goal was to land a job as a programmer before August 2021, so I wouldn't have to start another school year teaching. I didn't hit exactly that date — and that was okay.
The goal that wasn't met on time (and didn't matter)
At the end of September 2021, a month after my original goal, I got my first full-time remote job offer as a Software Engineer, without a tech degree.
If I had measured the bootcamp only by whether I hit the exact date I set, I would have called those six months a partial failure. Instead, those six months completely changed the course of my career.
What I'd tell someone who feels they "don't have time"
Time doesn't just appear. It's built with uncomfortable, temporary decisions, not with magical extra hours in the day. If you're considering a career change without being able to leave your current job, the question isn't "do I have time?" — it's "what am I willing to move temporarily to make it happen?"
I don't recommend sustaining a pace like that indefinitely. But as a sprint, with a clear end date, it's what I needed to get to the other side.
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