Mid-batch reflection
So I'm bad at this. Really bad. I told myself that I would try blogging my RC learning but I posted twice at the beginning and then left my week 1 reflection post unpublished.
Here's what I had to say at the end of week 1:
Hello World,
*I think I'm going to start making these more weekly reflection posts with a summary of what I accomplished and learned. *
This week was obvious the first week of the batch and it was pretty hectic to say the least 😆 I was worried about missing out because I'm joining remotely but I met a surprising number of people and the energy pushed me to get working on my website. I was definitely pushing this off because of fear of not being able to do it or to do it well. I find that my somewhat perfectionist (?) and overthinking side prevents me from getting into things that I want to try and prevents me from being open about my work. With my time at recurse, I'm hoping to break out of this behavior/habit so that I can pursue the things I want with more ease and learn more freely.
Now fast-forward to now -- the end of week 6.
Time flew by. On one side, I feel like I didn't do a lot, but on the other side, I have a working web app!
Let's reflect on that. (Warning: a lot of self-critical talk below, but there's light at the end of it, I swear)
Why do I feel like I didn't do a lot? At some point, around week 3 to 4, I started struggling A LOT with feelings of incompetency. RC is great, don't get me wrong. I'm surrounded by super smart people, who are eager, willing to learn, willing to help, willing to listen. I think that's really unique because it's not always the case that very smart people are always kind and generous (actually software engineers (what I'm trying to become) were always pretty intimidating to me.) So back to my point -- feelings of incompetency. The side effect of being around experienced engineers was that I felt behind. I didn't understand words or concepts being throw around. I was struggling to get started on my recipes web app. It wasn't that I couldn't code. I was digging myself into a analysis paralysis hole. I couldn't break the idea down into manageable tasks and instead was just making it bigger and bigger. I was getting overwhelmed. My inner critic was yelling at me "Why don't you understand? What are you going to do if you can't actually do this? You're not going to make it." Given the circumstances (not wanting to go back to data science/research, needing a job eventually, really bad job market), the scariest thought was "What are you going to do for work if you can't learn what you need to become a SWE?". As cliche as it sounds, my biggest enemy in week three was truly myself.
And just to make it clear, no one at Recurse actively made me feel incompetent. It was myself, talking to myself, and bringing myself down. What's really amazing about the people at Recurse is that, well actually, the complete opposite happened. Recursers encouraged me, talked with me about what I was feeling, and actively wanted to help me get out of my hole. Thanks to Chris for regularly checking in on me and talking with me about how things have been going, to Reed for pushing me through my anxieties, to Sareena for starting an achievements log with me, to Vedashree for recognizing that I'm overwhelmed and unable to start because I was dealing with project management issues (this was so spot on), to Will for helping to break down my app into small, manageable tasks as an exercise in project management/agile methods for the web dev meeting. I specifically named people I talked to in that really low week but there were way more people who took the time to chat and encourage me throughout Recurse!
Looking back, that meeting was what I needed to get back on track. The day after, I set up the core of my initial API and database and even started writing tests for different endpoints. The week after, I started working on my frontend and managed to set up some pages with routing. Now we're at the end of week 6, where I've got the app to a point where the basic functionalities are working, the frontend, backend, and database are all hooked up, and I've submitted a code review! I have a working web app!
Going back to my main point -- On one hand, I feel like I didn't do much because my brain jumps to think "I didn't accomplish as much as someone that already knows web dev and has worked as a SWE." I have a very bad tendency of comparing myself to others. I'm working on it. I know it's a bad comparison because no shit! but sometimes I can't get my brain to shut up.
Now, let's compare myself to just myself when Recurse started. I made something! Yes, it's not a cool and complicated app but could I have done what I did 6 weeks ago? could I have even thought through the design of the app and how the client, server, and database are all connected? Nooooo. Comparing where I am now to where I was in a time in the past is a fair comparison and I'm proud of the progress I've made!
Wooooooot. I think that's all I have to say for this post. Moving forward, I'm going to try to post, but mostly unedited learnings or check-ins for myself. For example, I think I'll try to write about something I learned/implemented once a week? I dont know. We will seeeee :)