Eleven freelance jobs taught me more than my bootcamp did

Four months of small paid gigs, mostly landing pages and internal tools for local shops. Clients moved deadlines, changed specs on day three, and once asked me to 'just fix' auth on a live site. That taught me to estimate with a buffer, to write the scope email before the first commit, and to say no to the fourth tweak. None of it was in the course. The money was small, but the first client reference is what got me my current job.