Core Foundations Reflection
– Sprint Five
What are three new things you have learnt about yourself and your ego due to the core learning?
I’ve learned that I had a fixed mindset myself but encouraged others to follow a growth mindset. So I had to make a big shift to start learning proactively again. It’s been a while since I had to learn anything purely for myself.
I’ve learned not to feel bad about asking for help and not waiting too long before asking. This causes stress and wasted time.
Breaking things down and working through them with others helps me a lot to focus and learn faster. I would try to jump to the end result of a problem and work backwards but I’ve realised that’s often not possible when learning programming.
What are the roles of values, empathy, and self-awareness in learning and programming?
Values help to keep you grounded when stressed and remind you what you’re working towards. It’s important to have empathy towards yourself, as learning takes time and it’s important not to compare yourself to others. Being self-aware is important so that you don’t cause unnecessary stress to others and you can recognise when you need to take breaks.
What has surprised you the most about the core learning?
Honestly, the fact that we can all learn regardless of what our preconceived thoughts were on the matter. I was definitely the kind of person who thought of myself as someone who just wasn’t good at learning logic-based things such as maths. I have been totally surprised by how my thinking has changed in the past few weeks. I feel a lot less stressed by the amount of time we have to learn everything.
What were the most challenging aspects of the core learning?
Articulating my thoughts and my findings. I have always found it difficult to articulate my thoughts without the use of a conversational approach, while researching is a slower process due to my difficulty with dyslexia when it comes to reading. So journaling and jotting down my thoughts ended up being difficult for me to stick to throughout Foundations.
Why do you think we, a programming school, are spending so much time focusing on core learning in a web development Bootcamp course?
The ability to code is one thing, but it’s also important to be able to work with others, be open to learning new things and have a positive growth mindset to be successful, for example when doing paired programming. While knowing your work is important we need to know ourselves and align that with our work ethic.
Does the time you spent studying core learning here feel like a waste of time? Should you have just used that time to practise programming instead? Justify your answer.
Absolutely not. It was insightful and educational to delve into some of these topics. For example, looking at emotional intelligence and researching the differences between that and IQ gave me a good perspective. Likewise, listening and looping were an excellent chance to take a break and really hear what someone had to say, connecting with them properly. I had an excellent time overall and I think the process for upskilling in human behaviours is essential, as otherwise we can fail to see the bigger picture.