on learning to code and learning about myself
about a month ago i decided to start working through the odin project and is has been an incredibly fun and amazing experience. i feel like i've neglected this place a bit more than i intended, but honestly i'm having so much fun and learning so many things i can't wait to implement on this website.
and, truly, i am surprised by how much fun i am having! i didn't know i was still capable of having this much fun while learning! it feels very much like when i was younger and still homeschooled, and i was allowed to just chase my interests and dive as deep as i wanted into whatever struck my curiosity that week. i've missed this kind of self-paced, no pressure learning environment so much.
i wondered at first if i was only enjoying it because i already know and udnerstand a lot about HTML and CSS from having slapped together websites on geocities and customizing the hell out of livejournal layouts, but i've started learning new things, harder things, and that excitement is still running strong.
once upon a time, i was always so scared of learning new skills. there was this idea ingrained in me that if i didn't understand something immediately or couldn't wrap my brain around a concept, then it just wansn't meant to be. i used to get so intimidated by the idea of taking on big learning project. i have always been fascinated by language. i read so many book on the history and evolution of language as a kid, and used to spend hours pouring over the copy of beowulf i had that had the original old english on one page with the modern translation on the other and compare the old and new, line by line, studying how words have changed over the millenia and trying to trace how they got from where they started to where they are now.
i wanted to major in linguistics when i went to college, but i knew that in one of the courses the final assignment was to create your own language, and the idea of that project was so immensely intimidating that i opted for a basic english major instead. it didn't occur to me that the point of the class would be to break the large project down into smaller, more manageable projects, and that i'd be taught how to complete each of those smaller projects until they all came together to be the final project.
i'm only just now understanding how much of a hindrace it has been for me being unable to see things as smaller parts of a whole. seeing a task as a series of small steps that can be completed individually rather than a massive project that has to be done in as few steps as possible meant that every college assignment was an axiety-inducing project that just loomed over me until i finally got too close to the deadline and sat down and stayed up all night working on it.
if i completed it at all. each semester it became harder and harder to keep up until i finally failed out.
i don't know if it's the vyvanse that comes with the adhd prescription or the maturity that comes with age, but working through the odin project has made me understand leanring in a whole new way. it's fine that i don't already know everything. it's fine that i don't understand everything the first time around. i can take as long as i need to absorb something before i have to move on to the next thing.
back to that love of language: i've also learned a lot about how i learn. i've finished the HTML and CSS foundations and started the JavaScript foundations. i was a bit intimidated at first: unlike HTML and CSS i have no ad-hock foundation of knowledge hapharzardly built from google searches. it's truly uncharted territory. but i've been excited every time i get to start a new lesson. there have been some discouraging moments: the first few lessons deal with JS only using numbers. basic math and simple operations. it felt at first like it was all going over my head, but i kept going. i decided that i would at least finish the foundations course and see how it went before deciding if i should move on.
as soon as the lessons started working with words, often in the exact same way hit had been using numbers, they immediately made sense to me. words take shape in my mind so differently from how numbers do. they stay in place better, don't disappear mid-thought or get lost as i try to remember how a formula works. as soon as it started working with words instead of numbers, solving the problems and writing out code became fun again.
it reminds me of how in high school, i really enjoyed doing math homework. something about sitting down with pencil and paper and writing out strings of numbers as puzzles that i had to solve was so calming to my brain. i just wasn't super great at it. as much as i enjoyed doing the homework, i made so many mistakes, and maintaining a B in math classes always felt like such a struggle.
writing code feels like that. that same sense of calm that i used to feel doing math homework translated over to writing code. except with code i get to use words. i get to use language. i get to indulge in my first love and make puzzles and solve problems in a context i understand.
i'm so happy to be having so much fun learning once again.