Conquering my Fear of Code
Upon entering grad school, the idea that I would be learning to code made me break out in a cold sweat and want to go running for the hills. Like most people my age, my only exposure to coding was learning some basic html in order to customize my Myspace profile 10+ years ago.
Last semester we had a quick little assignment that involved editing some boilerplate html/css, but we were encouraged to use Codepen and I feel like I didn’t actually learn anything. I also dipped my toes into coding Arduino and Processing, but that was done through a lot of guessing and googling. I think I ended the semester more freaked out than I started it. I started this semester feeling determined to conquer that fear.
Last week we started a new unit on web development — my chance to really learn this stuff! After a week, I’m feeling pretty good. I’m now realizing that html and CSS are actually pretty simple. I’ve been doing some wonderful tutorials on Codecademy and I feel so much more confident now. I even started coding a site from scratch. Now we’re starting to learn Node.js. I’ve still got some anxiety because I know it’s going to get a little more complicated, but I’m hoping my renewed sense of confidence will get me through it! I’ll make another update in a couple weeks when we finish up. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
