Challenges I faced at Andela and how I overcame them
So, I made it to week two of the bootcamp (whoop whoop!). It’s not been an easy journey but it has totally been worth it. I have reached this step much more knowledgeable than I was at the start of this whole process. Friends have been made, code has been written, internet has been consumed, stackoverflow has been browsed…
All this wasn’t without its challenges. The biggest of which was learning to balance the andela challenges and tasks and the work at my current job. For some reason, the andela bootcamp started at a time when I had a huge workload at home that I had to deliver. On day 1 of the bootcamp, I ended up asking the facilitator for an extra hour so I could finish up the challenges. I knew that whether he granted me this favour or not, it’s not something I’d be able to ask for every day of the bootcamp. So I had to come up with a plan on how I’ll deliver my work on time the next day.
I decided I’d work on the andela challenges as the first thing in the morning till I finished them, then put in extended hours at work to also accomplish my tasks of the day. It was a sound plan. Unfortunately the rest of the world didn’t follow my plan. My boss came to me with an urgent issue that I spent half the day working on. It looked like I’d finish even later than the previous day. I entered panic mode but then I quickly realized that panicking was actually making me much less productive. So I settled down, relaxed, cleared my mind and planned on how I would finish my tasks. I made a little Trello board in my mind. Then sat down and started ticking off what I had accomplished one by one. I had ticked all the items about thirty minutes before the deadline. It was such a relief. And an eye-opener on how important project trackers like trello and pivotal are. I used this concept in the following days and even I was impressed by how much I had accomplished.