Udacity Nanodegree Front-End Developer: Part 0

Gaini Zhulamanova
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read

From November 2017 till February 2018 I took part in the Udacity Google Challenge on Front-End Development in terms of a scholarship. It was a great 3–4-months experience with a steep learning curve. The most challenging part was though to find and invest 10 hours a week to learn to programme while working full-time during a high-performance Christmas season in the field of performance marketing. But I was not the only one who had been learning after work. I was fascinated by people from so many countries and with different backgrounds who wanted to develop themselves and learn something new. It was motivating.

After this learning experience, I had been thinking, whether to continue to learn programming or not. Because I must admit I had almost no time for social life during that challenge. It certainly depends on a person — how you organize your life, how perfect everything should be (according to you), etc. And besides working full-time I love doing sport, volunteering at a local church and doing a bunch of other stuff. I am now aware that if I really want to pursue the Nanodegree, I need to rethink and reorganize several aspects of my life. So you see, I take it very seriously.

There were several decisions in my life, after which I did a 180-degree turn. And when I think of programming, I have the same kind of feeling. That is why I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Before starting the Nanodegree, I decided to reconsider my learning habits in order to get more things done considering the lack of time. I took the course on coursera “Learning how to learn”. I learned more about our brain and how it works when it comes to learning. I learned what procrastination is and how to deal with it. And, of course, there were several practical recommendations to learn more effectively. It is a good foundation for the upcoming online bootcamp.

To make this journey even more fun and to remember my first baby steps I want to protocol my experience and share it with people who are interested in programming and consider doing the Udacity Nanodegree on Front-End Development. So far, my plan, besides my daily work, is to:
- concentrate on the Nanodegree which starts TODAY!
- help at the church
- do sport
- share my learning experience every two weeks
- and postpone “a bunch of other stuff” for later. In other words, I need to focus and learn to say “No” to everything that might be nice to do or to experience, but can actually wait.

And yes, I am aware of the fact that Christmas is coming :) Having said that I mean, if you keep following my diary, expect to read not only about my revelations in programming and how cool it is to literally create something but also about my personal frustration, doubts and everything that might come along the road.

Those 3–4 months of the Udacity & Google challenge and self-teaching through other online courses in my free time showed me that learning something like programming is not only about acquiring new skills, it is a personal challenge — a challenge to improve your self-discipline, to learn to deal with different emotional states (when debugging :)) and see how far you can go. Keeping that in mind I want to enjoy the whole process and I am very excited about it!

Picture source: www.pexels.com

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