Imposter syndrome on high — my amateur Web developer start
I’ve followed a number of personal philosophies on how to live it throughout much of my own. One of those philosophies largely surrounds doing everything you can to avoid experiences that make you feel like you’re in a prison.
That philosophy was working out well for me for a number of years. Until last week when, as part of a Web development bootcamp I began last month, I mentally found myself behind bars with the menace of my new education: Javascript.
I am Javascript’s sad-faced clown.
To complete this bootcamp, I’ve gone out of my way to give it exclusive focus in my life. I don’t have the distractions of a significant other or children. I’ve deactivated just about all of my social media accounts. Against my more journalistic inclinations (of which I previously indulged with regularity), I’ve kept my news gather to a 20-minute YouTube viewing while I eat lunch each day.
I want to be a good, dependable developer. I’m not concerned with being the best in the world. That’s not the goal. Like so many of my personal endeavors before this one, I want to be the best that I can be at it. But right now, I’m struggling just to be an affable practitioner of basic Javascript.
I am Javascript’s bruised and bleeding matador.
I can get away with breezing through Codecademy quizzes and watching YouTuber after YouTuber tell their viewers over and over just how easy it is to learn. I can fool around in HTML and CSS like the rest. I can dole out an if/else statement and concatenate all the live long day among the simplest of JS functions. But when I get a word problem at me, my eyes grow wider until my brain has ultimately forgotten how to make them blink.
Javascript, as my instructors remind me, is largely about problem-solving. I enjoyed that sort of academia so much as a grade student, and it’s been essential in my journalism work over the years. But something’s not clicking right now.
Am I not hungry enough to learn anymore? Maybe my brain is overflexing in this bootcamp. And I’ve always struggled with anxiety and depression, which this week felt like a mountain on my shoulders. I broke down a few nights ago and started to reconsider whether taking part in this immersive program was worth the headaches and (unexpectedly) heartaches.
The saddest part of this story? I’m only nine days into the program.
I am Javascript’s nervous grandfather at ‘Bingo for elderly singles.’
I don’t remember just how best I learn, but I am trying to swallow my pride, keep my head down and learn what I can as fast as I can and as best I can. Like I said, I want to be good at this — I want to be someone that employers/clients/future students can count on as a dependable source for high quality work and advice. I accept easily that such a status won’t develop overnight, but that’s mostly because I can’t seem to get the hang of Javascript tonight.
The good fortune I have is that I am in a program with impressive and understanding instructors who don’t look down on me for coming up a little short. And I’m among new peers who share in some of the same moments of sweat and tears because they did just as much as I did to set aside their lives for three months so they too could learn how to be better coders and programmers — not just for themselves, but for a busy world in need of creative problem solvers. And I don’t want to lose my chance to join them.
So if anyone else has experienced this hole of inner turmoil and found their way out of the Javascript prison, then I seek your input on how I can do the same. Because …
if (success < 100) {
future = “MC’ing Bingo for elderly singles”
}
else {
future = “bright”
}
I’m David Brandt. I write words. Practice coding. Shoot photos. Make friends laugh. Think about the future. Think about my future. Read all of my Onion retweets on Twitter: @davidbrandtwho // (as soon as I reactivate it).
