My Road for Knowledge

Written on June 5th 2013:

This blog has come from desire to reflect back in 10 years at the formative stages of my career. Hopefully it will give me strength in times of frustration. The ability to see how far I’ve come and to know that I can go at least that much further.  DevBootCamp-Chicago is and will continue to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

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I wish I would have started this on day one, but truthfully it’s day 17.  What was originally supposed to be a 9 week course has turned to 12 with my choice to repeat the first of the three 3-week phases.

My first three weeks were a bundle of inner turmoil as I did everything wrong.
* I concerned myself with how advanced the other students were rather than focusing on my own learning.
* I used the traditional paradigm of learning while in an environment that did everything to dispel the methods I’d learned over the last 16 years of schooling.
* I let stress get the best of me until I constantly felt ill and couldn’t get a single night of sleep.
* And worse of all, I doubted my self. After three hard weeks, when I had passed the assessment by the skin of my teeth with 3 instructors telling me that I could move on and a 4th telling me that I could benefit from repeating the first phase I jumped on that doubt.  I chose to repeat under the self delusion of “I need to improve my basic skills or I need to code faster to keep up.” While both of these facts are true they shouldn’t have stopped me from moving on and embracing new challenges.

A strive for perfectionism is a curse that many of us have. It might be alright in many fields, but to those who work in an artistic field know that the idea of perfection is a cancer.  As with the author or painter who never releases their work due to an attempt to produce the perfect piece of art, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, programing is an art.
There are always more things to learn as it is a language, and as such is constantly evolving to fit the needs of the community. Any attempt to “learn it all” before moving on to the next subject is folly.

Now as I repeat this material I strive to increase the depth of our understanding, to make sure that all of the other students in my cohort finish their cores each night, and when I have extra time study for phase 2.  I hope that my reasoning is sound, that my plan is actionable, and that I’m able to maintain this drive.

I hope future posts are shorter and more positive.

Sincerely Karsten, W.