Ruby, another error…
Ruby, oh Ruby what you have done to me.
Fried my brain with a single week spent with thee.
Hashes, arrays, classes and loops.
Error upon error make me say “oops”…
Errors, constant errors, that has been my first week at Coder Academy and quite honestly I haven’t felt more exited to fail in my entire life. In my first full on week dealing with programming I have found that I am always in an uphill battle, this is a really strange feeling considering I never found high school challenging. Putting my whole heart and effort into a given subject had sadly become almost foreign to me while I floated through the last few years of my life, and now all of a sudden having something challenging taking up my full attention.
Failing has become one of my favourite pass times in class recently and I have noticed that I am becoming increasingly exited when I run into a brick wall. Maybe it’s just my naturally competitive mindset but whenever I come face to face with an error in my code I can’t wait to figure out why it isn’t working for me. It’s almost as if when I run faulty code, the terminal turns around and says “see I knew you couldn’t do it”, and I have no choice but to prove it wrong.
This mindset, while allowing me to force my way through metaphorical brick walls, can become more of a burden then a blessing from time to time. It can backfire into states of frustration and making silly mistakes that are quite frankly unnecessary that end up compiling into more frustration and mistakes. This often leads to a sense of burnout and exhaustion. I found myself at this point of Friday afternoon heading home staring at the material we covered in class that day with no capacity for processing anything i way reading. I was as if I was reading a blank page. I just happened to be listening to a favourite podcast of mine by the name of Sad Boyz Pod and ironically they were talking about the topic of burning out and it was at that point i decided to have a break and refresh.
Arriving back home to my beautiful cat Leia I had an early night and recharged for the next day of coding. What I’m trying to get across in this blog is that failures provide a perfect opportunity to grow and learn, but they also have to potential to burn a person out no matter how satisfying it is when you rectify your mistakes and grow from them.
Remember to always apply yourself to whatever it is you’re doing, and learn to get exited about your failures. Just remember to take some time to cuddle your cat and get a good sleep so you can keep up the good work.
