Portrait Of A Udacity Student

To succeed in a program like Udacity’s Nanodegree programs, you must have incredible self-discipline. You must be a proactive community member, initiating your own outreach. You must manage your time, your resources, and your energy as you balance your learning against other commitments. You must have an unshakeable work ethic, be able to self-impose your own structures and deadlines, and be able to successfully improvise your way through a learning universe largely of your own design. You must show, not tell. You must genuinely build, and be prepared to showcase what you have achieved in ways that make clear the value you bring to the table.

In short, you are in charge of your own success. We support you every step of the way, but the extent to which you marshal available resources — forums, meet-ups, mentors, and more — is up to you. While everything you need to succeed is made available to you, the onus is on you to manage, leverage, and deploy those resources as you pursue success — there is no hand-holding. Most important of all, you must be a committed lifelong learner, ready to return to the classroom again and again as new challenges and new opportunities arise.

When an employer looks at a Udacity graduate, this is what they see. Not just a list of cutting-edge skills. Not just a portfolio of projects that demonstrate genuine mastery. What they also see is an independent, passionate, dedicated, self-motivated, lifelong learner.

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This post was written by Christopher Watkins, Senior Writer, Udacity. It is excerpted from an article originally published at blog.udacity.com.