Homework

Day 123 of writing every day.

I’m getting my first online lesson for the online school I enrolled in recently next week. Though it’s a lesson, lessons are self guided and it’s more of a first time meeting to get to know one another and touch base on what my end goal is. My goal is to become a front end developer and without a computer science background, I definitely will need guidance on what’s needed to make a career change.

Before the lesson, I’ve been asked to go through a JavaScript section in the school’s online library of materials. As someone who just finished a course that had JavaScript as a core component and having learned some on my own, there are things I’m already familiar with. But I gladly welcome the opportunity to further solidify my knowledge and learn extra bits of knowledge that weren’t part of what I’ve learned so far.

Besides the text material, I had also been given a spreadsheet to enter my goals and a study schedule to follow that’s part of the process to make sure I stay motivated. This means having a concrete plan on what to do and how to manage time so I put enough hours in. It really helped that there were example entries for goals and how to’s that I could refer to. After all, goals that are vague and lacking any way to track progress are about as good as empty words.

Even if feeling driven, a goal without a clear path means you’ll most likely be wandering in the dark without any sense of direction. That’s how I think I’ve been living most of my life in retrospect. Get good grades, go to college, get a good paying job, and that’s it. If I had to breakdown how the modern education system of making everyone go to school plans things out for everyone that obeys and gets integrated into the system, that’s what I’d call it.

Writing down my goal, schedule, and plans took a couple hours. There wasn’t much to write in terms of length; I wasn’t being asked to write an essay or anything. Providing an answer to something as simple as what languages I want to learn and what my goal is at the end of three months actually took a couple hours to do.

When you really think about the what, when, why and how in the goal setting process, it makes you examine what you’ve been doing up to now. If you’re serious about it, not only will you be forced to come to terms with the new things you need to do to get there, but also what you need to change that’s been holding you back in life. All the excuses up to now cannot be allowed to continue holding you back. Otherwise things will remain the same and the outcome of the program is less likely to do much for you.

I felt like I was rewiring my brain, or at least some of my established behaviors when I started filling in my answers on the form. The active thought process felt like a decision to come to terms with myself. Sort of like how a smoker might quit smoking cold turkey if I have to use an example.

Staying at home most of the day definitely blurs the separation of weekdays and weekends, but I’ll be able to stay on task and do my homework plus more. I feel focused and ready. If anything my homework is not busy work, but life-changing work with what I want to do with my life as the question that needs answering.

Thanks for reading!