The main things that I’ve been learning are really a comparison to when I was a uni student and it has been so interesting to see myself interact with challenging concepts, deadlines, and learning new things.
I have learnt that I am much kinder to myself than the last time I was a student and although I still have many of the same old habits (procrastinating and perfectionism), I now have lots of new ways of approaching problems, and a completely different attitude to learning.
It has also been great to want to share more about myself than I ever would have 10 years ago. I have much more confidence and feel okay with not knowing the answers, and being humbled daily by Javascript.
These are huge for all parts of life, but super important here as some of this stuff has been super tricky. I think if I wasn’t able to demonstrate empathy or self-awareness throughout this process, I would very quickly have become overwhelmed with the discomfort of learning such technical and detailed content.
What surprised me the most about the core learning is that no matter how familiar you are with mindfulness and human skills, it really requires practice and consistency to form into a habit.
Even as a habit, it’s something you need to consciously call on when you’re having a challenging time. Which is great might I add, to have a toolbox to draw on!
And the more well-practiced you are at using your tools, the better you get at knowing which tool is best for which situation or mood. And you lose any reservations about drawing on those tools. Like why try to hammer a nail with your bare fist when you’ve got a perfectly good hammer in your belt?
I truly loved the core learning - I think honestly the part that I found most challenging was having to plug my writing into a blog page where I’m not super happy with the look of it. And by always having the mind to fix up the HTML and CSS later when I have time, meant that I’ve had to just put up these blogs in the meantime anyway and let go of the idea that everything needs to be perfect - something I have really been working on.
It’s great for learning - obviously! It helps students so much to be able to connect to more of the meta stuff around how they problem solve, or tackle new concepts, manage their self-talk. Especially in such an intense course, this is critical, otherwise I imagine you’d have so much more of a drop out rate.
On top of that, it also means that newly churned out developers, have a better chance of making it in the world.
A strong no. It makes us better people. And that could never be a waste of time.