Overcoming My Learning Challenges
Hi, you’d agree with me that wisdom isn’t associated with old age as we Nigerians have often been made to believe but in essence the ability to acquire information, dissect for proper understanding, question for better clarity and above all unlearn what’s become obsolete (old people never agree 😞), well as a millennial the ability to learn and unlearn is built into the core fabrics of our DNA and today I’m keen on sharing my most recent experience.
Earlier in December, I was invited to Andela’s boot-camp which commenced today, prior to commencement materials that help build a nodejs application which utilizes sequelize ORM and postgresSQL were shared for preparation towards development of a project that was released a month prior to today. I have to be honest the journey to being a software developer has not been a straight one thus far, over the years I’ve learnt about it in bits and pieces even holding an IT degree (although not equivalent to a CS degree) has only helped to scratch the surface, once again I’m faced with a new challenge within the same environment. Programming is not new to me, I’m familiar with the core basic concepts but everything that makes a complete software developer is a mystery to me, you might be wondering what qualifies as a complete software developer, shouldn’t it just be the ability to write codes that works? No (very large NO!), just like every other relevant profession there are soft skills required to excel (communication, relationship building, documentation skill, emotional intelligence and so on). I have to say, though described as soft skills, the method of developing and building them are in no way soft but daunting and often times confusing, especially emotional intelligence for me.
Preparation involved working with other individuals to learn, debate healthily and collaborate, during this period I’ve had to learn how to deliver information without sparking a negative emotional response from my audience or listener, honestly I failed a couple times but learnt immensely what generates a negative emotional response. My biggest lesson came when I had to describe to a fellow colleague why a technical method he defined to solve a problem was cumbersome but not wrong, initially it was an argument on an endless loop going back and front on what’s right and what isn’t, during this loop I was inspired by a book I recently read on emotional intelligence (by Daniel Goldman) and decided to break out of the argument taking some time to quietly listen and observe my other half describe why he felt his approach was right, it wasn’t until this moment which lasted roughly 20mins (it takes great strength to listen to understand and not just to reply) that I realized his approach was actually right but not a good practice, making it cumbersome-I had initially thought he was absolutely wrong. Lesson-when you understand how a person feels, you can always respond to make them feel better without compromising the truth.
In addition to emotional intelligence, I also picked up a few other soft skills like building a healthy relationship among colleagues and maintaining communication without being a pest to another. I lacked these skills and I’m honestly still struggling with them but I’ve learnt the best way to build them is exposing yourself to people you’d like to grow a relationship with, this exposure could include attending familiar events, contributing in conversations both in-person and online and being aware of people’s plight. Applying these aren’t easy especially if you are accustomed to absolute privacy, you’d have to forgo your comfort zone as I had to learn.
Finally my greatest joy has been the discovery on how to use XML through my study of YAML. Honestly I’ve been confused about XML and its uses for years now (I know, it took so long to learn 😢), every time I read a document on it, my previous knowledge gets tangled with the new information leading to a whole big mess in my head but having to document my application using YAML on swagger (which was easy to understand), I was able to connect such knowledge with a similar tool, XML. You can’t imagine my joy, I’d probably never use XML due to languages like YAML and JSON but who knows it might just experience a transformation tomorrow. Ever heard of the cornerstone? That’s exactly the story of JavaScript. 😁. I’m still learning and I’ll never stop, the only joy to being alive is learning because it’s full of surprises. Thanks for reading. ✌️
