Day 126 of writing every day.
The days go by with the weekdays and weekends having little meaning to me. It’s a matter of, “Do I have something scheduled on that day?” right now. It might sound like the dream for those who want to quit their job, but I’m in-between jobs and the goal is to acquire the skills to become a frontend developer, but also to know what I’m planning on getting myself into.
It’s great that the online school I’ve enrolled in has so much information available, but being self guided, it seems quite overwhelming just trying to stay on top of what I should be doing with regards to the curriculum. My first lesson is not until Wednesday and there’s a career consultation tomorrow. Yet there’s this lingering doubt hanging over my head asking, “Am I really on the right track?”
Some homework had been assigned already but have I done enough before the lesson? Will I have gone over everything by then? But most of all, are my goals clear and will the curriculum really lead me in the right direction to land me a job that’ll improve my financial circumstances? Having read some of the hints to achieving a successful outcome, I am confronted with the fact that I’ve been spending maybe a little too much time gaming.
I’ve been able to get through the JavaScript content so far without issue as I’ve learned the subject a few times already. This time, the easy to understand examples and real life comparisons helped solidify some concepts that had been shaky for me until recently. On average it’s said that someone learning to program on their own would require about 1,000 hours of learning time to achieve the level needed to work in the industry, and some put in the time over the span of a year. I’m only getting a little less than 3 months left.
While anyone can possibly become a programmer by learning to code, the cold hard truth is a lot of them don’t have what it takes to get there and succeed. They just don’t acquire the skills and deep enough of an understanding to make them hireable, even if it’s said the industry is short on people. Maybe they learned the wrong language too.
The uncertainty factor is something that can get to our nerves and some people may resign that they’re not smart enough or blame failure on the school they paid because they expected having paid meant they’d be guaranteed a job. Coding can be quite unforgiving in that you’re dealing with mistakes and errors all the time, and if you’re unable to stay afloat and develop a clear vision of what you need to do, then you’ll sink.
Habit formation is key to success in this type of environment. No one’s going to hold your hand and tell you what to do even if they make it look so easy and say anyone can do it. You’re basically left to fend for yourself and find out how to help yourself by seeking out knowledge. If someone else fixed and wrote the code while you did nothing because you have no clue, then they did the job, not you.
You’ll need to form habits of accepting your own mistakes and also learning from them. Many like to shift blame on something or someone else. Not only owning up to your mistakes but forming new practices. I’ve talked about habits before when praising self-help books, it really struck home seeing the topic mentioned in my coding school’s tips to success.
I’m only at the start of the program but I’ll really need to work on my habits. I won’t see any of my current habits as good and not needing any improvement. I think I’ve identified the bad ones already, so it’s a matter of just following through session by session and day by day until it becomes easy to focus and be productive.
If I neglect to do better and be better, then my bad habits will define me and I’ll never amount to more than what they limit my potential to.
Thanks for reading!
One Chance Works 