You Don’t Need to Know How
Module 2 has come to an end and I’m two weeks into the last Module. Module 3 will focus on developing a group project using the skills we have acquired over the last couple of months, while introducing just a couple of new things (FastApi, Authentication, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB). I hope to be able to continue developing my skills and styling the automobile dealership app (project 2) so that it can better reflect my style. Additionally, I have several app ideas I’d like to work on as well, and since I’ll be busy with Module 3 I hope I can return to them later.
Throughout Module 2 I made note of key lessons/moments that really helped me stay on track to making it over the hill.
Admit you do not know things.
Why is it that we are so afraid of admitting we do not know things? Instead of being afraid, we should realize that not knowing is the catalyst for creation, understanding and progress. Admitting we do not know things, makes space for questions.
Ask questions.
Throughout my educational career I found raising my hand and speaking in front of the class to be extremely intimidating. Especially when I arrived to college and witnessed how large the class size was. I avoided asking questions so that I could avoid speaking in front of a large audience and revealing to them that perhaps I did not belong in the classroom or at this university.
Fast-forward to the first week or two in this program. I realized I could not succeed if I let my fear of speaking out hold me back from understanding something. So, I continued to ask questions in Module 2. Hearing other people’s more advanced questions at times tempted me to stay quiet, but I held on to one fact—that whether I belonged here or not did not matter, because the truth of it was that I was here because I wanted to be, I wanted to learn, and the instructors were here to help me understand until I did.
“You do not need to know how to do things…”
While I know a lot more than I did in March, my mind constantly reminds me of what I do not know how to do. At the end of every module I feel joy at having passed. That joy is immediately followed by the dread of a new project and being faced with what I do not know how to do. As I prepare to apply to jobs and enter the workforce as a software engineer I worry about my lack of knowledge. Any future employers will find out I lack knowledge in a certain language, or topic and discard me. When one of my instructors observed this was a worry many students had, she imparted some wisdom. “You do not need to know how to do things, you just need the experience of sitting there and going through the hard things and finding the solutions. You need the experience of learning”. It’s impossible, she continued, in this field to truly know everything. Other Software Engineers I have been able to interview agree that they still come across things they simply do not know. In a field that is so ever-evolving such as this one, it’s impossible to reach a level of ALL-KNOWING. The valuable, and marketable skill here is not tied to a specific piece of code, but more so to your ability to research, learn, and ask.
Give yourself some credit.
A pattern I noticed throughout the module is related to the aforementioned deep-dive on what I do not know, and the velocity at which I was being exposed to new material. I often felt that I had sat during lecture, taken notes, and learned a million things and nothing at the same time. I expressed this to an instructor one afternoon as he visited my group’s breakout room. He disagreed. He believed I knew more than I actually thought and set out to prove it. He asked, “if I asked you to build an application that showed me star wars planets could you do it? And how long would it take you?”. Wide eyed, I said, “maybe? I don’t know…?” He replied “let’s do it”. I shared my screen and we began. I wrote the code I could remember, him filling in some holes and as I did it, gaining a better understanding of what I was actually coding. I did not do it all by myself, but he proved to me that I did have an understanding of how to do it, and that was enough. It was a big confidence boost. How often do we underestimate what we know instead of giving our brains a little more credit?
Stop getting in your own way. Rather than another example or takeaway this feels more like a summary of the above.