12 February 2024

What are three new things you have learnt about yourself and your ego due to the core learning?

I’ve definitely been reminded of what it's like to be out of my comfort zone during this experience. Its been awesome to be reflecting and taking note of myself again, in the past I did a lot of work on myself and for the last five or so years I’ve shelved a lot of the practices that I had in place like journaling and reflecting at the end of the day. I’ve learnt how much I enjoy those things, its helped settle my insecurities and quiet the voice in my head that makes me anxious about what I do, say and how I behave.
A main part of my daily reflections has been about taming my ego and my confidence to be within bounds. I've been able to reach out for help, let go of stubborn ideals to make things work how I want them to work and instead take on solutions presented to me. I’ve been aware of times I’ve felt negative about what I’m doing and let them rest instead of festering on my mind constantly due to being able to meditate and focus on my current project instead of regretting a mistake in a previous project.

What are the role of values, empathy, and self-awareness in learning and programming?

It's really important to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing and be able to relate that to the people around you. This is a core part of team work and making yourself relatable to others, if you don’t understand what you value then it becomes a lot harder to understand difficulties for others. There’s a lot of knowledge and experience that other people bring to the table, and with programming there is infinitely more to understand than there is to know, too much for a single person. Due to this I believe teamwork is a key strength that developers need to nurture as we are then able to work together and be effective.

What has surprised you the most about the core learning?

I was surprised by how much other people struggled with the work and how much I felt able to help. The listening and looping exercises and weekly check-ins have been a place for me to gain insight into the other students in the cohort and I’ve really enjoyed being able to put myself out there to assist them. I originally had planned to come to this course to put my head down and keep focused on my own work and problems but these social interactions have made me really care for others and also opened the door to learn from and share this experience with them, something I’ve cherished so far.

What were the most challenging aspects of the core learning?

I'ts been quite confronting to be reminded how much I’ve changed since the last time I did real internal reflections in my day to day life. In the beginning I found it quite difficult to accurately reflect on an entire days work and think about how each moment felt. I struggled to complete my blog posts and felt really insecure about taking longer than others and it fostered a fear that I would be a burden on students when we get to group work. However, in the last few weeks I’ve really been able to overcome that. Being intentional about having a positive inner talk, being social and not comparing myself to others has allowed me to focus on what I’m learning and gain a level of self-confidence in what I'm doing.

Why do you think we, a programming school, are spending so much time focusing on core learning in a web development Bootcamp course?

From discussions I’ve had with friends and also my experience working in IT previously I know there can be a large lack of personal skills in development spaces. I think doing the core work is so key to changing that for future generations of the workforce, I think as well that the adage that you can teach anyone to code so you should hire for how they will work with others rings true and I believe this is why Dev Academy puts an emphasis on these core skills as they want to prepare us for the workforce as well as inspire a love of coding.

Does the time you spent studying core learning here feel like a waste of time? Should you have just used that time to practise programming instead? Justify your answer.

I refute any idea that the core learning was a waste of time. I think without the reflections, without the time spent highlighting the importance of personal skills, self awareness and knowing that you can always learn, I would not have been able to handle the stresses that came with trying and failing a lot of the coding challenges. I believe that the core skills are well placed and spaced throughout the program, as the coding challenges become harder and the learning concepts become more complex the core learnings were right there to support negative feelings and give you the tools to make them positive ones.