I’ve learned that so much of my experience in life comes down to my outlook and mental health at the time. And, for me, so much of my mental health and outlook can be directly impacted by the kindness I show myself. When I’m feeling down on myself and I’m giving myself a hard time, my mental health suffers and my experience is painted negatively. I feel down on myself when I’m feeling insecure or fearful and my ego is in control. If I’m in an environment where I’m struggling to feel secure and psychologically safe, I find myself on the defensive, searching for validation, and my ego comes out. That’s also though when my ego is there telling me I’m not good enough. I want to remember that the more I focus on nurturing myself and creating a safe space of feeling ok with who I am, then the more likely I will quiet that negative voice and have a growth mindset.
Values and empathy: Knowing how values shape people can help you have empathy for others. Understanding is the root of love (at least in my opinion and according to many Buddhist scholars) and the more you understand of yourself and others, the more you are able to love them and yourself. Values are the way to understand because what people value illustrates what’s important to them and what their boundaries are. If those boundaries are crossed or those values aren’t respected, it’s likely that person will suffer. Knowing these things opens the door to feeling empathy for ourselves and others as we can understand why they might feel a certain way and what the cause of their feelings and behaviours might be.
Self-awareness: Self-awareness is a key value for me and something I believe is extremely important. The more we understand ourselves, the better we can communicate to others where we are and invite them to meet us there. We are constantly learning about ourselves and who we are. But the more we can be on the search towards self-awareness, we can be open to learning and growing, while understanding that we are a work in progress.
All of these things are important in programming and learning because programming and learning can be frustrating and difficult. We are discovering new things and in the process also learning about ourselves and how we navigate those new territories. Empathy, values, and self-awareness are the directions and guide posts that help us navigate these new situations well so that we can have a positive experience and work together constructively.
What surprised me the most was how much the core learning and the subjects we studied had a direct impact on my happiness and outlook. The core really helped me stay positive and not get deterred by a hard week of learning.
The most challenging part was just the amount of writing! I haven’t written this much since uni which was 15 years ago so it took some getting used to.
I think because programming is a skill that you can learn, but if you’re not prepared to work in a team, that skill will not take you very far. Working in tech the past 10 years has taught me that it’s way more important that you are a team player rather than having the right answers all the time. We can always find the right answer, but working with people who aren’t kind and are ego driven rather than team driven, makes for a really unhappy and unproductive work environment. I’d argue human skills are more important than programming skills because one of them is much easier to learn and can be found on the internet.
It was not at all a waste of time. The core study helped me stay positive and connected to the other students while I learned programming. Without it, I imagine I would have felt far more isolated and been much more in my own head. This would have had a really negative impact on my time programming. I could imagine I’d give up more easily, feel more dejected, and I wouldn’t have learned as much.