Stuck but Growing!

I’m working through a checkpoint for the coding bootcamp I am in and am stuck.

Just like all the other times I’ve been stuck, I got frustrated, took a step back and regrouped, did research, took a break, tried something new, did more research, tried more things, took another break and then I tried things I knew wouldn’t make a difference but “just in case”.

I repeated this process for about 6 hours. Finally I went to bed, only to do the same the next day. After about 5 or so more hours the second day I was questioning my decision to go into tech and my ability to write or understand code, clearly I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

But then something great happened. No, I didn’t figure it out. I emailed my mentor, asked a direct question, summarized all the things I had tried so far and realized I kind of knew what I was talking about. Then he responded and said all my code looked correct or pretty close and he couldn’t figure out what the problem was either. So he had another mentor look at it, and he couldn’t find the problem either. Then we had our weekly 30 minute meeting and spent a hour pouring over the code and trying different things, still nothing. After that I went back to my last commit and started fresh, but I still kept getting this damn error. Now he’s taking it to the bootcamp’s mentor “team leader” to see if he can find anything.

While I’d normally be pissed that I’m stuck and wasting time, I actually feel really good. Partially because life is busy this week and it’s kind of nice to be in a holding pattern. But mostly because I’m no longer questioning my ability. I kind of know what I’m doing, there is still a TON more to learn, heck more than I’ll ever probably be able to learn in one lifetime. But the obstacle that has me stuck also has developers with years of experience stuck too, so I must be doing something right…even though something is wrong.