The Learning Curve, Breaking Point And Yield Point

Kayode Adeola
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

Sometimes I ask myself if there could ever be a time in one’s life when you can confidently say “I have learned all there is to be learnt about something”. Even though I know the answer to that is never, yet I still can’t help but wonder. My experience at the last Andela Bootcamp was proof enough. I started the journey of creating a name for myself in the tech eco-space some few months back, the big step for me was when I applied for the Andela Fellowship and started studying the resources provided to aid my learning. I can still remember how strange it felt looking at those line of codes and at the same time the sense of excitement felt to be privileged with the gift to create.

After studying the learning resources thoroughly and successfully completed the home study tests, I got an invitation to the Andela Fellowship Bootcamp which is a two weeks Coding Camp to prepare us for what lies ahead. But that was about five months ago, and here I am again writing this post from yet another bootcamp. The experience so far? That’s to be shared some other time, the purpose of this post is to share with you my beloved readers the challenges and progress made so far from my last boot camp experience.

It was a wonderful experience for me because it really exposed me to a whole new level of learning. I had the opportunity to meet new people, build new relationships with some of my fellow bootcampers and also the privilege of learning from them to keep growing as a developer. We were asked to work on a full stack application, something I have never attempted before and also deliver some core features of the application within the space of the two weeks. To achieve this I would need to start learning tools I was not that familiar with such as Postresql which is a database management tool, Sequelize, Node and some Cascading Style Sheet Frameworks to build the user interface of the application. There was a lot to learn in a matter of days and I had no idea how to start to begin with.

After reading through all the resources I could find online to get started, I was finally able to break different aspects of the project into chunks and started working on my project. Also, I interacted with my team members and learned from them on how to achieve some things that were not that clear to me. To check how much progress I had made, I made a checklist of things to learn and implemented them after just to be sure I was on track. In the end, I was finally able to achieve say 70% of the project requirements. Even though after the whole exercise I didn’t eventually make it into the fellowship, the things I learned during the duration of the bootcamp has even made me better as a programmer. I do hope it will be enough to make me worthy of acceptance this time around.

For me, the learning experience is what I have come to value most. Often times you might get so frustrated up to that point when you feel giving up is an option; this is what I personally refer to as the “breaking point” of the “learning curve” and in some cases, you eventually give up when you’ve reached your “yield point”. For me the latter isn’t an option because that is not the Andela way. Passion and commitment all the way.

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