HOW I DEMONSTRATED GROWTH MINDSET RECENTLY
According to a famous psychologist, Carol Dweck, “Mindset is a self-perception that people hold about themselves”. A typical example is believing that you are either intelligent or not intelligent. Having the wrong mindset is detrimental to human growth and limits one from reaching his/her highest level of productivity.
Carol Dweck also went ahead to explain that in the growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. This is one of the principles that has kept me growing over the past few years.
As a means to always improve on myself, there are three main things I embrace: Challenge, Failure, and Feedback. These are characters that if properly implemented assists a person in reaching maximal productivity.
On October 2018, I enrolled in a Java tutorial class that was supposed to last for 1 month after which we would be expected to develop a project. Before I had resumed the class, I had beginner’s level knowledge and could only understand basic syntax. This tutorial successfully explained the structure of Java, as well as common syntax needed in building a simple application.
While lectures were going on, I was one of those who made it a habit to study extensively while implementing those concepts that had been taught in class. My peers noticed this about me and occasionally came to me for explanations.
On the final day of the tutorial, we were assigned projects. Basically, everyone was asked to create a particular type management system, but when it got to my turn, the lecturer asked me to select a project of my choice. As I was trying to come up with a project topic, one of my colleagues challenged me to create a game; not just a game, but Super Mario. Knowing fully well that I did not have adequate knowledge to create a game, I accepted the challenge.
I started off this project by creating a blank window with a shape (circle) on the screen. When I finished this, I stopped and looked at my laptop screen for about 5 mins without moving (I didn’t know where to start). I closed my laptop and took a walk. When I got back, I decided to start by outlining steps (features) I needed to implement. I found myself having to learn a whole lot just to implement a particular feature.
By the end of that week, I realized that was able to replace that shape (circle) with a Super Mario icon. I could also make Super Mario move front and back whenever I pressed on the keyboard. You can imagine how happy I was.
I continued this learning process for another week while experiencing a whole lot of bugs, and finally, on the submission day I had achieved a Super Mario game with a background, sounds, enemies, and Mario could perform actions like walk, jump, and fall.
You can see that by accepting this challenge I was able to improve my knowledge by far while increasing my experience in programming.
