When I first landed the Moringa school scholarship offer last year I was filled with fear. First it was my first ever congratulatory message after a series of rejections. I was also coming up from a depressive state( story for another day).
I didn't want to disappoint. I feared I'd fail and it would be clear why I had been rejected previously. I was also coming from a non tech background.
So I went into a frenz of trying to grasp everything. I'd feel the weakest and poorest especially in comparison to my classmates. First mistake I did was to try read everything. I'd jump from one tutorial to the next. Everytime I would feel overwhelmed by how much I felt I didn't know. Tutorials are good but what are you looking for. Watching like a series will be of little help. Build as much as you can that's the best way to learn.
Secondly, due to my fear of failure I felt that my questions were stupid to ask so I'd opt to be quite and struggle on my own. I didn't also want to say publicly what I was learning since I feared that if I failed and dropped out of coding school I'd be answerable as to why.
Lesson learnt building in public helps for accountability and consistency. No man is an island and no matter how small your progress seems it's still progress. Enjoy the process. Even if it's baby steps. Consistently coding will put you ahead in due time.
Being a perfectionist is good but can also act as a source of trouble. When building a project then I'm faced by challenges I'd beat myself for being so poor. This would cause me to withdraw and when I came back I'd try to learn again afresh from the beginning so that I don't make mistakes again.
Lesson learnt: give yourself grace, learn from your progress. Today I enjoy mistakes and when I get a different error code I rejoice the programmers way(finally a different error!). Don't give up yet keep coding.
Vamos a crecer