Meet Irina Ranneva 🚀

Irina Ranneva is a 30-year old teacher from Tallinn. Her roots are actually from Moscow, Russia but after coming to Estonia 7 years ago, she started to like it here and stayed for longer. After 2 years of teaching her students remotely, she had had enough and decided to change her career path and found kood/Jõhvi. Now she is halfway through the 3-week Selection Sprint with minimal prior knowledge of programming.🚀

Irina sees the self-teaching methodology as something really interesting, especially taking into account her prior work as a teacher. 🧑‍🏫 “Knowledge is extracted in interesting ways: we go from practice to analyzing all the prior steps. This kind of deductive approach is something new for me and it is something that needs time to get used to,” says Irina when talking about the learning process so far. She believes that having smart and motivated people around you makes you take the extra step and go more in-depth. At the same time, it also gives the opportunity to learn a lot from them. 

One thing that Irina keeps emphasizing is the overall vibe of the community here at the Selection Sprint. “Everyone is really supportive and friendly and there is a lot to do together after a long day of programming,” says Irina. She is also known as a board game enthusiast and has been organizing game nights 🎲 with other students since day one! These kinds of initiatives are always welcome and allows bonding with people and taking the first steps to strengthen teamwork skills. 

When the 3-week period reaches its end, then Irina hopes to make it to the school but is not bothered if that is not the case. “This 3-week kickoff is just the thing to motivate my kind of lazy personality and even if I don’t make the cut, then at least I leave with a lot of motivation, new skills, and friends that can help me whatever problems I come across.” Irina plans to learn programming at the same pace even after the Sprint is finished. 🚶