Summer in San Francisco: Lessons Learned
I spent this past summer in San Francisco working as a Design Apprentice at thoughtbot. To say that I learned a lot would be an understatement. From a series of existential crisis to my very first pull request, each challenge I faced resulted in a new learning experience. I reluctantly returned to the East Coast this week to wrap up my final year of college and in last chance attempt to longingly reminisce about the Bay Area, I present to you my Lessons Learned.
- If you feel like you still have a million things to learn, that is a good thing.
If you don’t look back on code you wrote in the past year (or whatever you were doing) and cringe, you sure as hell are not learning or improving. My first few weeks in the office, I was very self conscious about inexperienced I was. I am my harshest critic and realizing that wanting to learn more in itself is an accomplishment was one of the most important things I realized this summer. - It’s okay to hate tech every once in a while.
This was the summer of Yo and the absurdity of startup culture. I was lucky that I worked among designers and developers with very smart insight about Product Design. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. But there were far too many times I was walking around SoMa and couldn’t do anything but roll my eyes at the conversations I would overhear. One of the most enjoyable weekends I had this summer was visiting an old friend in LA. We didn’t talk about tech the entire weekend and it was incredibly refreshing. I came back to work reminded that our users are not us and that we need to get out of the tech bubble way more often. - Set your own schedule and explicit goals.
I tend to wing it a lot. I’m not irresponsible or ill-prepared, I just usually expect the worst and hope for the best. Being in sole control of what I wanted to get out of an experience was kind of foreign to me. In previous work environments I had my daily schedule planned out for me by the minute. In contrast, my schedule was entirely up to me this summer. Not only was I more productive, but I felt in control and proud of what I accomplished since everything tied into what I wanted to get out of my apprenticeship. - Don’t over-nest your SASS/SCSS files. Just trust me.
- Always say yes to burritos.
El Farolito, Señor Sisig… I will miss you so. If I gained any weight this summer, it was entirely made up of burritos. Worth. Every. Calorie. - Soft skills are just as important as hard skills.
I learned more technical skills this summer than I would have in a single semester in college. I’m on my way to fearlessly conquering front-end development and my design skills have perked up as well. I have a stronger grasp on how to tackle the strategy end of consulting and have continued to improve how I communicate with clients and my team. But the sole most important thing I learned this summer is that in order to succeed, I just need to find the confidence to do so. I know it’s been said time and time again but it really sunk in when best when I was told, “We are already confident in you, you just have to be confident in yourself”. Imposter syndrome is real and may never go away, but just keep learning, keep persevering and no one will know any better.
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