One More Step
Learning is really a thing of its kind. One moment you don’t know something, the next moment you’re teaching another person the same thing you didn’t know a while ago. It is the second week at Andela’s boot camp. The journey has been tough but am still pressing on. I have learned valuable lessons on the way. To be sincere, 10 days ago, I knew very little about web design and about programming in general. Now things have radically changed and at a fast pace. Am even surprised at how I got to know these things.
The last one week has been a race for me. I started falling behind schedule on the second day of the week. By Thursday I was not reading the gitter messages — since everyone was talking about their apps not working properly at Heroku when mine was riddled with bugs. Each day seemed to have more to be done than the previous one and each challenge tougher than the preceding one. Friday was approaching quickly but I hadn’t been able to implement several functionalities. The login to my app was not working, I had not designed the user interface and there was a blog post to be submitted by 4:30 pm. I was also relatively new to OOP, having only studied it for about 3 weeks. The day when everything independently turns against you and then collaborate to frustrate you. You try A and A fails. As a consequence B fails (because it depends on A) and C fails because it depends on both A and B. I was stressed but more was expected for me if I were to progress to the next stage.
I was the type of a person who wastes lots of time doing nothing and hurries in the last minute. I thought this would work at Andela too but I was in for a rude shock. The last minute thing was not working here. Most of the things I had done earlier rarely had deadlines and those that did had ‘enough’ time allocated to them — like a week or two before they are due. At Andela, there was a daily deadline. Within this one day one had to find out what is it they have been told to use, learn how to use it and use it to make something that stands out — all in less than 24 hours. I had to sleep late and wake up very early.
I had to really work hard and most importantly I had to change tactic. I stopped everything and held a ‘crisis meeting’ with myself. Why was everything falling apart? I realized that probably one of the major things that could have made me fall behind was planning. I was starting on a challenge, doing it halfway, only to abandon it and embark on another one — thinking the latter is ‘simpler’. I would start the new one but 10 hours into it realize it depended on the preceding one. Doing this cost me a lot of time and also made it hard for me to resume a challenge from the last thing I did. I had to have a plan, to make sure everything gets done in time. That way I wouldn’t fall behind schedule and maybe I would even get enough time for each task. I laid out a detailed plan, everything had to be done at its time.
Besides having a plan, I also needed to save time on the process of understanding a new concept. I had realized asking someone about a certain problem is a much quicker method of solving it than following a tutorial or a YouTube video. I started asking questions which really helped me to catch up as compared to spending hours finding the best tutorial out there. I also started seeking answers for questions asked by my peers that no one could answer. Trying to answer these questions improved my learning pace.
But I think this second week is going to be better. Seeing that we are all physically together. It is simpler and more convenient to ask for assistance at any time or simply brainstorm through a problem together. This week takes collaboration to a whole new level. I can’t wait to learn more about web development and about myself.
