
We made it! Week 10.
Making it this far in the software engineering immersive course has been empowering, and a little soul crushing. As much as I want to say I love the whole course, I didn’t. I probably loved about half of the course. The other half tested my patience, pushing my limits.. There were times I felt empowered when having my “ah-hah” moments, finally solving a difficult problem. But, there were times that that feeling of empowerment was proceeded by discouragement from the difficulties that come with problem solving. Even though I made it this far in the course and have even built a full stack application, I still wonder if I am cut out for this. But, each time I find a solution and see my final product come to life, I realize that I can do this. The empowerment I feel during “ah-ha” moments outweigh all the negatives that come with programming, and I am dedicated to chasing that feeling.
I have never worked this hard before, and I find myself actually enjoying the effort. I wake up each morning excited and anxious to push my knowledge further and become more immersed in this industry. I have fallen in love with learning, I find myself trying to understand how some things work, what process they used to get there, and why that code works better than another. This constant desire to learn can be frustrating at times because there is so much information out there and I have not even scratched the surface. Sometimes I understand that I need to step back and understand that I am just starting my career, and temper my expectations, but I will not stop pushing myself forward. At this point in my course, I am excited and anxious about my future. As I said before, I know there is an ocean of information out there, and I look forward to engulfing myself into the industry. I may not have a degree in Computer Science , but I have passion and strong work ethic. I hope to put myself in a situation where I can continue to learn, and one day help pave the road for others that wish to follow.
To catch you up to date, I have learned HTML5, CSS, Javascript and built a project showcasing these languages. I have learned Node, Mongo and Mongoose, Express, deploying applications on heroku, and built an application around these concepts. I have also learned React, Password Authentication, and implementing API’s, and again, built a full-stack MERN application. Sprinkled in all of this, I have been learning about algorithms as well. In the next few weeks I will be learning Python, SQL, and Django!
This has been, to put it simply, difficult, but I feel renewed and more driven than I have ever been in my life. This course has felt like a never ending for loop with a minor misspelling error bug that no one can figure out, but is right in front of them. I would have never thought that I would be able to complete something like this and actually want more from it. But, here I am on my way to 10th week of 10+ hour days of constant learning, and still standing. Well… sitting.
I plan on being the best I can be in everything I do and I know I will get there. I am up for all the challenges that lie ahead of this course.