What are the role of values, empathy, and self-awareness in learning and programming?
Awareness of both yourself and others is a key skill to cultivate for collaborative working, particulary in stressful environments. Knowing and understanding what has informed your perspective, values, and self is crucial for being able to assess your perspective, and also understand someone else's. If you are able to identify why you think a certain way, it is much easier to understand why someone else thinks differently, and have empathy and kindness for them. In essence, it is really important in any environment were you are working with other people to be able to communicate effectively with them. If you don't know yourself and what is informing your actions and emotional state, it is really difficult to be able to explain it to someone else, and unless someone knows where you are at and what your limitations, strengths, and boundaries are they can't know how to constructively fit with you. With both learning and programming, it is really important to know your values and why you are doing something - whether your career choice and why you are there, or emotionally why you respond to a situation in a certain way - so you can reach out for help, but also explain to others so they can provide you with kindness, patience, and support as needed. Vica versa, being able to show up and support those around you and empathise with their struggles and successes is so important for building sustainable working relationships, and being able to collaborate effectively in both learning and working environments.
What has surprised you the most about the core learning?
I have been positively surprised by the breadth and reliableness of the core concepts that we are working through. Although I have been familiar and working on everything that we have covered in core for quite a while, it is really reassuring that the topics chosen are the ones we are looking at. Through my tutoring, I have seen how improving emotional intelligence, mindset, and being aware of how these impact your connection to your work drastically improves your success in your work. Also through the teams I have worked in, it has been really clear when people haven't been introduced to the kind of core we have worked on, and those people often struggle a lot more with effecitve collaborative work. So it is very reassuring that there is the acknowledgement and prioritisation of these key skills, and that they are seen both here and in industry to be worthwhile putting time into.
What were the most challenging aspects of the core learning?
I found that the most challenging aspect of the core learning was keeping to the timebox when writing my blog posts. I had already thought and put a lot of effort into all the core we have covered in foundations, so it was tempting to write everything I think and know about myself with regards to the blog post questions. Ensuring I am concisely answering the questions without feeling the need to explain every nuance in my perspective has been something I have had to focus on, and hopefully something I have improved on!
Why do you think we, a programming school, are spending so much time focusing on core learning in a web development Bootcamp course?
A large part of working as a developer is collaborating with other people. In order to be able to do this effectively, it is really necessary to be aware of yourself, what you are thinking and feeling and why, and be able to communicate that to those around you. Not being able to do this makes it really difficult to collaborate with others, particularly in high stress environments, and especially when you are working from people different than you. While having the skills to be aware of yourself and communicate where you are at is important, having the awareness of where others are at allows you to meet them with kindness and have constructive and supportive conversations, rather than just seeing them at face value. All of this is crucial for creating supportive and effective working environments, both at an individual level, and for teams as a whole. As this emotional intelligence is key to being able to collaborate, and hence work, as a developer, it is a clear choice to spend some time nuturing and growing these skills.
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.
I don't think studying core learning has been a waste of time. All of the necessary self refleciton and emotional intelligence needed to succeed in collaborative environments is an ongoing process that takes consistent deliberate work. Although a lot of this can be extended on outside of the coursework, allocating time every week to reflect and consolidate within learning hours ensures that this internal work is continued, but also importantly that it is done within a development context. The interpersonal skills and self reflection to be done in a professional environemnt can differ from that in a personal one, and having the practice of navigating and exploring one's emotional intelligence and state in these spaces is crucial to ensuring that these skills are transferable to a working environment.