It's been four weeks since Hanghae Plus Frontend Cohort 6 wrapped up. I missed the graduation ceremony because it fell on the same day as a trip I had planned, so the sense of "I actually finished this" hasn't fully sunk in yet. Between a trip to New York and a long holiday weekend, I kept putting off this final retrospective — but here I am, finally writing it.
Why I Signed Up
Let me go back a few months to where I was before I hit the purchase button.
- I had two to three months to fill meaningfully before starting at Korea National Open University (방통대) in September, and I wanted something substantial to do with that time.
- As I crossed from my first to second year at work, I noticed myself gravitating toward comfort and getting a little lazy.
While looking for something to shake me out of that rut, a frontend developer friend who had graduated from the same bootcamp as me highly recommended Hanghae Plus (항해플러스). When I looked it up, the Cohort 6 graduation date lined up almost perfectly with my university start date.
I had honestly seen a lot of Hanghae Plus ads on social media, but I was skeptical — I'd heard some negative things about how the program was run, and the aggressive advertising didn't help. That said, the recommendation came from a developer whose skills I genuinely respect, so I gave the website a proper look. The curriculum turned out to be much better than I expected.
I immediately swiped my card.
The Start of the Journey
I counted down the days from payment to the first class. I'd been through a bootcamp before, so I knew it would be hard — but honestly, I had missed that feeling of being completely absorbed in development. By my second year on the job, the work had become routine and I was starting to feel bored, so I was eager to dive into the assignments.
But… the shock of that first assignment is something I'll never forget.
The content itself looked interesting, but the sheer volume of it made me ask myself "Can I actually make it to the end?" before I had even started. I literally told my teammates and my study buddy Jinsol to physically drag me back if I tried to quit.
To give you a sense of how brutal it was: the original submission deadline was Friday at 10 a.m. (a time-honored tradition), but the instructors must have sensed the difficulty level, because they extended it to Sunday morning. During Week 1, I was so terrified of failing the assignment that I spent every waking hour on it outside of work and sleep.
But I pulled it off.
The Hardest Moment
Every assignment was tough, but the hardest moment by far was Week 9, when my tests kept failing in the CI environment.
Week 1 was hard because of the volume; Week 9 was hard because of the technical gaps. I started early, but I pulled all-nighters three out of seven days that week, and the Thursday before submission I went to work on just 20 minutes of sleep. (Honestly, for almost all 10 weeks, I was running on 2–3 hours of sleep every Friday.)
After barely finishing the Week 9 assignment and watching every test pass locally, I thought I was finally done. Then…
I pushed to GitHub, and a specific test failed in CI.
I pushed an empty commit to retrigger CI. It failed again. Just as I was convinced it was over, I reached out to Jihun, who had been helping me with the assignment — he told me tests can fail randomly in CI environments. I pushed empty commits four more times before all the tests finally passed. If that's not a rigged system, I don't know what is.
What I still remember vividly: while I was sweating through those empty commit pushes, I was sitting on the floor of my closet, and I just lay down and dozed off right there. I woke up twenty minutes later and went to work, and the final passing empty commit was one I pushed on the subway to the office. If I hadn't decided to try one more time on that commute, I would have failed Week 9.
When Did I Grow the Most?
That question brought a flood of thoughts.
When did I grow the most? What even is growth? Did I actually grow?
After a lot of reflection, I landed on this: I grew in the moments when I solved a problem.
There were moments that stand out — pushing empty commits on the subway all the way to the end to finish Week 9, wrestling with how to use the FSD (Feature-Sliced Design) folder structure efficiently and trying until it worked. Moments like those.
I believe growth happens when you step outside the familiar, push through difficulty and discomfort, and keep going anyway. As the saying goes, "Get out of your comfort zone."
I received Best Practice (BP) recognition twice in the clean code section. I don't think it was because my work was perfect — I think it was recognized because I kept challenging myself and trying new things. Instead of defaulting to the code style and patterns I was used to, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to transform dirty code into clean code, and what kind of shared structure would work best. Then I actually tried it out.
A Mentoring Moment I Won't Forget
Our team signed up for Theo's mentoring sessions seven weeks in a row — a testament to either our dedication or our stubbornness (or both). The sessions covered communication, career direction, and philosophical questions about work and life, delivered with warmth but also honest, no-nonsense candor. (I appreciated that Theo didn't just validate everything we said — though be warned, choosing Theo means staying up until the early hours of the morning. That's on you.)
Through Theo's mentoring, I overcame the fear of taking time to think and study carefully, even during a busy sprint.
My chronic problem had always been this: when deadlines got tight, I'd skip the thinking and just move my hands as fast as possible. When I brought this up, Theo cut right to it:
"You're slammed right now, you're chasing a deadline, and you're still studying and thinking things through while you work on these assignments. That's exactly what you need to realize you're doing right now, here in Hanghae."
That hit me hard. He was right — even while working on these assignments under pressure, I was studying, reflecting, and pushing myself. Being busy doesn't mean there's no room for that. And taking the time to think and learn is actually the faster path, not the slower one.
After that realization, I started believing at work that "if I study and think it through, I'll get there in the end." Even under a tight schedule, if there's something I want to learn and apply, I know now that I can go for it — as long as I factor that study time into my estimates.
Did I Get What I Came For?
There were three things I was hoping to get out of Hanghae.
1. A strong push of motivation — for self-improvement and for finding a new job
YEEES
I got a strong push of motivation. Though honestly, more for self-improvement than for job-hunting. I'm genuinely happy with my current team, so the drive to switch jobs didn't really build up. But watching my cohort members learning and trying new things at full speed gave me a real jolt — I made a firm commitment to myself to keep moving forward instead of settling.
2. Practical skills and know-how I could use on the job
Half YES… Half NO…
More than picking up immediately applicable skills, I feel like I mostly got better at reverse-engineering assignments (hah) — but more seriously, I learned what I need to study next to build the skills that actually matter in the real world.
For example: breaking through the mental barrier around test code. Before Hanghae, tests and I were barely acquaintances. Now we've at least spent some quality time together. Spending a bit more time there should help me build the practical skills I need.
3. The experience of being completely absorbed in development
Absolutely YES
Going through the same cycle of lecture → assignment ten weeks in a row was genuinely long and grueling. But every time I fought through an assignment I felt a real sense of accomplishment — and getting BP? Peak achievement unlocked.
Back in design school I used to stay up late working on projects, but that was more "work until late, then sleep." In Hanghae, I was pulling full all-nighters every single week — I genuinely surprised myself. "Am I actually someone who can power through the night like this?"
It's been a while since SSAFY that I've gone this hard on something. It was fun. But it was really, really tough. (Honestly, the fun of being absorbed <<<< the exhaustion.)
The One Thing I Regret
I should have put myself out there more.
Not networking enough is my biggest regret. Between work and assignments, I just didn't have the energy to go out of my way to talk to people and build connections. It was just: stay up all night on the assignment, submit, attend the lecture, go to work, repeat.
One failed assignment
I didn't pass the Week 7 assignment. That week was genuinely brutal — from the Saturday lecture to the Friday submission deadline, I was working weekends and doing overtime every single weekday because of work commitments. I ended up starting the Week 7 assignment on Thursday and couldn't finish it in time.
I had picked up a few unexpected BPs along the way, so I had been hoping to graduate with a Black Badge. But work got unexpectedly crazy at the worst time. Looking back, I'm not sure how I could have pulled off both the assignment and weekend work plus daily overtime — it may have simply been physically impossible.
Still, I don't want to blame the circumstances. If I had been truly exceptional, I think I would have found a way to get it done regardless. I'm choosing to accept my own limitations.
Graduation Result
I graduated with a Red Badge. A little disappointing that it wasn't a Black Badge, but passing every single assignment except one? I'll take it. And I got BP — I'm satisfied.
Ten weeks of Hanghae was hard, but it was undeniably a period of real growth. Once again I stepped outside my comfort zone, faced the discomfort head-on, and proved to myself how much I can grow when I do.
Now a new journey has begun — Korea National Open University.
Just like in Hanghae, I'll keep pushing forward without giving up until I reach my goal.