Really stoked about the good news guys, and I have nothing but gratitude to this great website that helped me a lot in my web development studies. The job doesn’t pay much (my wife still has way more salary than me lol), but the thought of applying what you’ve learned for just five months, and actually getting paid for it, is really fulfilling.
A little background about me: I live in the Philippines, where a college degree is the most important aspect of getting a job. If you have no college degree to show, then you will really have a hard time landing a job. I didn’t finish college since I needed to stop and start working to meet my family’s needs (we are not that rich). I started as a freelance writer since freelance jobs don’t necessarily require a college degree to be accepted. However, I’ve always been fascinated in programming ever since, so when my writing job is not as fulfilling as it was four years ago, I decided to jump ship and focus all of my resources and time to studying how to code.
I started taking web development courses in Coursera. You can apply for a certificate for 70$ per course, or just apply for a scholarship if you don’t have the means. While Coursera is really helpful in improving my knowledge, it doesn’t give much practical exercises. Thankfully, I found FCC, and it really helped solve real-world problems in the form of its projects.
Fast forward to November, I started applying for jobs on the thought that I won’t have any money for Christmas if I don’t. Thankfully, a company replied to my application. The process took a week to finish. I was tasked to build a multi-user time tracker app that has different functionalities for admins and regular users, which is definitely out of my area of expertise since I’ve been focusing on front-end dev, while this app requires backend knowledge. I had to study basic backend and database in three days just to complete this app. Thankfully, they liked my demo and I got a call a week after, saying I got accepted.
This accomplishment would not have been possible if not for this amazing website. The projects that we have to do are really important in improving my skills, as well as my portfolio. The algorithm challenge really helped me in improving my logic and showed me that there are a lot of ways to solve a particular problem.
Lastly, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to the people who helped me in my studies. @tropicalchancer has given me the opportunity to join the Rhinos Cohort, and it really changed my web development journey for the better. This group has really helped me a LOT. It has given me loads of resources to improve not just my programming skills, but my personal growth as well. The members are on-point in reviewing my projects, as well as answering my questions. They have inspired me to be better every day and have helped me a lot while studying for my time tracker app. Special thanks to @slowdata, @Trion, @anon36685476, and @kunalgupta05 for all the discussions about every question I need answered! 
If you are getting demotivated because you don’t have anyone to talk to, or feeling lonely because you feel you’re all alone in your web-development studies, I suggest you join us! You’ll never regret it! Here’s the link: https://forum.freecodecamp.com/t/part-3-seeking-eager-campers-to-join-fcc-cohort/55393
