The ‘Ah-hah!’ Moment

Everyone’s journey is different.

It’s been a journey these past 24 weeks now having graduated from my frontend dev boot camp! I’ve had a travel pass on the struggle bus most weeks and it’s caused a lot of personal doubt and feelings of imposter syndrome. It’s hard to see the bigger picture sometimes. Especially when it feels like everyone else seems so on track…. spoilers, they’re probably just as freaked out as you!

Do and Don’t compare yourself to others.

What the heck does that mean!? Compare yourself in way that is positive and productive.

DO be inspired by others, make goals for yourself, and see how others have achieved theirs. TALK to other people, ASK what they struggle with, where things were difficult. UNDERSTAND you are not alone.

DON’T be intimidated by others success. Everyone has different skills, ideas, and understandings. You will find yourself succeeding in area’s other’s struggle through. It’s natural, and you don’t need to be perfect!

But what about this ‘Ah-hah’ moment? When everything is suddenly supposed to make sense?

The “Ah-hah!” Moment

I would argue this is a bit of a myth, things naturally take time for you to absorb and understand. Coding is HARD. It’s about comfortability with the subject. Becoming comfortable that mistakes don’t scare you, figuring out what you do and don’t like doing.

While some of my peers had found what they enjoyed 12 -14 weeks into our boot camp I was struggling to love code. Was this the right choice for me? Had I made a horrible mistake? Why wasn’t I having my “Ah-hah!” moment too?

Simple, I wasn’t comfortable yet. I was so distracted by trying to understand everything that I wasn’t really focusing on what I enjoyed about it. You don’t have to know everything, and you won’t.

It wasn’t until my final project that I really got my Ah-hah moment! And it was because everything was going horribly wrong too!

Everything went wrong

I mean everything. My teammate’s life quite literally exploded, through no fault of their own, and had to deal with a lot of life responsibilities mid-project. I was forced to pick up the slack to keep us on track to our deadline. But this is how I started to love coding.

I loved solving the problems, finding solutions, and seeing our idea come to life through code. Learning the backend was making me understand the frontend so much more and I realized that what I really wanted to be was a full-stack developer.

Granted, there were a lot of technical issues, but weirdly enough I was positive and upbeat through it. I communicated with my partner constantly about what I was doing and where we were in the project. I was put in a team lead position and found I also liked that. I want my team to succeed, and I want to make sure we’re on track with things. This was my Ah-hah moment finally… and it was at the end of the whole thing!

Don’t give up and don’t wait for “The Ah-hah..”

Because waiting leads to doing nothing, just keep pushing forward, you will figure things out. No one expects you to understand and know everything especially just starting out. I’m rooting for us!