Claire's Learning Blog

What are three new things you have learnt about yourself and your ego as a result of the core learning?

1. My EQ is not as high as I thought because now I know EQ includes things lik emotion regulation and self confidence. I think for me especially, I need to work on my self-esteem so that I can become a more confident person.
2. It is really good to see my strengths and weaknesses written down as I’ve never deliberately done that. After completing the task, I feel like I don’t give myself enough credit. I should be proud of how I am as a learner because it’s so easy to be self critical and put yourself down/focus on the negatives. Having them written down is also good because I can refer back to when I need a pick me up. It also gives me an idea of things I can work on.
3. Last one kind of ties in with the second one but I definitely don’t celebrate my progress enough! Celebrating is so important because it not only helps lift my mood but it also helps me persevere. Prior to taking the course, I know I would really beat myself up about things/feeling like I’m incompetent but throughout the course, I have tried to keep positive and remind myself of my progress. This is what has really helped me push through with my learning.

What are the role of values, empathy, and self awareness in learning and programming?

I think understanding who you are (your values and having self awareness) helps you develop a better understanding of how you learn and how you interact with others. This is important because programming involves working collaboratively with others. The role of empathy in programming is important because it helps us to connect with our colleagues. It helps build better relationships where we can relate to our colleagues/peers, empathise with others and promotes helpful behaviour.

What has surprised you the most about the core learning?

Two parts surprised me - I thought EQ refers only to the having positive social interactions and empathy (which I feel like I have) but it was much more than that. There are definitely things I need to work on like positive self talk and having more confidence. The other section that surprised me was the listening and looping. I felt like I really needed to concentrate when listening to the speaker to ensure I could loop back all the things they were telling me. It made me think about how I'm always always on the go and trying to do as many things as I can/multitask. I need to slow down, be mindful and focus on one thing at a time.

What were the most challenging aspects of the core learning?

It was really easy spend lots of time looking up information because I really like reading about psychology and how you can improve yourself. I sometimes find typing out what I’ve found into a blog hard as well because I’m worried that it doesn’t make sense. I think this was another challenge for me and it relates to my self-confidence (i.e being worried about how will people perceive what I’ve written).

Why do you think that we, a programming school, are spending so much time focusing on core learning in a web development bootcamp course?

Core learning is important because it’s gives us time to learn and reflect on ‘human skills’ that we don’t usually think about. The topics covered in core helps prepares us to work and collaborate well with others. Learning coding it is important too but if we learn the skills taught through core, it will greatly benefit us because not only does it helps us become better learners, it teaches us how to be better people too!

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.

Not at all. One of the main reasons I wanted to learn at Dev Academy was for core learning. I believe these skills are really important because they can be transferred into anything else you’re doing in life. I also found having core learning in each sprint is a nice way to break up the curriculum. If we did coding back to back for 5 weeks I think that could be quite overwhelming. Having core learning is beneficial too because it gives us time to reflect on what we’ve learnt which is a really important part of the learning process.