Chingu Voyage Challenge: A letter to my past self
Trust the process. You aren’t going to know how to do everything, even after years of experience. Don’t worry about the results, they will come. Focus on learning. Google things if you need to. Programmers aren’t super-geniuses that can churn code out like it was as easy as eating pie. We all started knowing nothing–just like you. ~ Alex Cannon
The quote above, beautifully describes the principle that helped us (Bears team 10) complete the Chingu Voyage challenge (without the secret sauce :)
We succeeded in building Jobbatical Clone ( source code is on Github ).
BackStory
Bears team 10 is a team of four Front-end developers who had no experience with the Back-end. The enormous challenge was learning the Back-end, building a full-stack application (cloning www.jobbatical.com) and learning to work together as a team. We were all excited to get started and there was a lot of positive energy.
This is the letter I would give to my past self, if I could go back in time.
The Letter
Dated: 25th July, 2017
Dear Bolu,
I know you are scared and feel like this challenge is impossible. It is going to be okay, you’ll be fine.
There will be highs and a lot of lows, you’ll be confused; a lot. You will question why you started this journey, you faced difficulties and truly believed they are super-hard, they are actually easier than you think and you will be fine.
Life got in the way, you and your team-mates stopped working on the project for a while, this is completely normal; don’t freak out. However, when this happens, you need to get back on track as soon as possible. Don’t give up. What got you through this project was commitment and dedication to completing the challenge.
Be Patient. I can’t overemphasize how important this would be. Be patient with your team-mates; they have other stuff going on in their lives. One of them would get a job right in the middle of the project, she’ll be unavailable, be understanding. Be patient with yourself, you will struggle, you experimented with technology and it didn’t work, this is normal, ask others for help. Explain your problems to other people; this will help you gain a better understanding of the problem. You won’t understand stuff in the beginning, but if you stick with it and ask Senior Web Developers for advice, it will all make sense in the end.
Trust the process. The belief that if you keep at it, you will create something significant goes a long way. You made a lot of mistakes, errors that made you feel stupid. Don’t be too hard on yourself, we do stupid things all the time; it’s an important part of being human :) Keep working on the project, figure it out piece by piece, trust that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Trudge on. This is hard; I know. Anything worth doing is usually hard. Trust the process.
When it is all over, you will be very happy and won’t remember all the pain you went through. It would have been more than worth it. You will experience a high that is indescribable. Do not forget to do the extra work to get feedback from people and make improvements on the project. Polish it, refine it and make something you are proud of.
There would be no champagne to celebrate, but you would have given yourself something far greater; the confidence that you can tackle hard problems. You would have learnt an important lesson in life:
“Things that seem impossible at first, can be made possible by persistence, work and patience”.
Remember, there is so much to learn, so much to do, this is just the beginning.
Be grateful, because you are about to become a better person and a better developer.
Yours Sincerely,
Future Bolu (From 16th of September, 2017)
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Many thanks to my team-mates, my family and friends, to the amazing Red Pandas community and the Chingu community. You guys are the best.
