Becoming a Better Learner With Launch School
JS101
On March 15th of 2023, I enrolled in Launch School (LS) and excitedly jumped into the material of the first course (JS101). At the time, I had been programming for a few months and had just completed Harvard’s popular online course, CS50x. After this course, I felt I was a much better programmer, and, heck, I even thought I might almost be ready for a job! Oh, how I was mistaken…
In researching how one could successfully transition into a career in Software Engineering, I fell under the impression that it was possible for almost anyone to become a software engineer in a matter of months. Wait, I could make a six-figure salary if I simply learned how to code? Count me in! I decided I would spend a few months learning on my own to see if this career path was truly right for me, and if I decided it was, I would enroll in a bootcamp (I was also very hesitant to pay the $15k tuition fee).
Thankfully, before I committed to paying for a bootcamp, I stumbled upon LS. After reading more about LS, I was immediately drawn in. I resonated with their self-paced and mastery-based approach to learning. Especially as someone with many priorities in life outside of education, I didn’t feel like it was realistic to push everything aside in order to get a job in tech. I thought there must be another way. When I found LS, it felt like it was meant to be. This was the school for me.
Learning For Mastery
Fast forward to JS101. As I was working through the course, I was immediately struck by how deeply we would go into seemingly simple topics. I had never seen an online course (and any educational institution, for that matter) teach you about debugging techniques, developing your problem-solving skills, or how one should approach learning. Programming courses I had taken in the past were very fast-paced and everything was taught at a superficial level: “This is a for loop… and here’s the syntax… Alright, onto the next concept”. I did not realize this style of learning was not working for me (I don’t think it works for anyone), and being that most of my learning was done in this fashion, I was led to believe I was bad at school. But what does it even mean to ‘be bad at school’?
Believing I was inherently flawed caused me to half-ass assignments and avoid digging deeper and exploring concepts that confused me. All I knew about learning was how to transcribe and memorize. And I maintained this outlook on learning throughout my whole academic life. I honestly do not know how I made it up to this point, especially now that I am on the other side and understand that the reason we learn is to grow our minds. Today, I want to learn as much as I can, know the concepts I have learned about inside and out and simply do the very best I can at anything I decide to pursue. I only wish this mindset was instilled in me earlier in life, but wishful thinking isn’t going to get me very far, and I am grateful that I at least uncovered this part of me at some point in life.
Finding Community and Why I Chose Software Engineering
As I settled into LS and started engaging with the community, through Slack and study groups, I discovered that I had a lot in common with the other students. Although we all had vastly different careers and academic histories, we were united by our shared goals and our past experiences in schooling environments that weren’t conducive to deep learning. In university, I struggled to connect with other students in my program even though we were studying the same thing (Media Studies). I had this feeling I wasn’t like the other students and was on a different path. I didn’t want to create random commercials/TV shows/movies or waste my whole day working on a film set. I soon realized this was simply due to the fact that I wasn’t passionate about working in the media industry, and that is okay. I knew I wanted a career I cared about and wanted to put as much of my time and energy into. That meant that I needed to dig deeper to find that career path. I wasn’t going to find satisfaction in a career that I was only willing to put in the bare minimum.
What mainly attracted me to a career in software was how deeply engaging the work appeared (also, my partner convinced me to look into it, so I gotta give credit where it’s due). Programming is a skill that requires focus, logic, attention to detail, and a strong ability to problem-solve. I must admit when I first started programming, I often got discouraged and a few times, wanted to quit altogether. I felt as though I wasn’t learning quickly enough and couldn’t get into the programming flow. One message Launch School tries to drill inside you from the start is that learning something to mastery takes time, persistence, and repetition. You should not expect to understand something deeply the first time you read it over. Exposure is not the same as understanding.
At the start of my journey, I was way too often wondering when and if the time would ever come when I felt like I was a half-decent programmer. I was not trusting the process. Another lesson I have taken from Launch School (and the book Mastery by George Leonard) is that an activity will get more enjoyable as you get better/gain more skill at it. When I read this, I immediately knew what Leonard was talking about. I am a rockclimber, and have devoted myself to the sport 4 to 5 times a week for the past 6 years. I can see first-hand how much more fun climbing has become as I have gotten stronger and more skilled.
Confidence grows with skill. Understanding this will help you push forward in your learning journey and believe in the process. Remember that training and studying is not always fun. It’s hard work and can be exhausting at times. You will have bad days and periods when progress feels extremely slow. Just remember that progress isn’t linear. And you need to have bad days in order to have good days!
Conclusion
So is consistency the key to success? In a sense, yes. But we must ask ourselves what it means to achieve success. Well, of course, the answer to this question is subjective. But in my opinion, there is no such thing as success, as this implies there is a final destination to our journey. The reality is that once we reach this “destination”, we will not be satisfied. Humans do not know satisfaction. All we really know is how to look for the next thing.
To wrap up, although I am early in my Launch School journey, and know I have a long road ahead of me, it has been a very good time so far, and I am eager to continue learning and growing. I successfully passed the JS109 assessments (which you take after JS101) so I am now working my way through JS110. Thank you so much for reading my blog and hopefully something in here resonated with you, even if just a little.
