- Core Learnings
This blog post is covering my learnings on the human skills portion of the course so far. Throughout foundations we've covered a large body of work in this space and I'm now reflecting on what I think of it and any knowledge, insight or skills I've gained.
Three new things that I've learnt about myself:
- Fixed Mindset - I feel that I've always had a fixed mindset and not a growth mindset. This meant that I ways excelled in the subjects I thought I was born to be good at and not very skilled at others. I was always scared of failing and so I never tried to learn to many new concepts that I thoguht I wouldn't succeed in.
- Self doubt - I still have a voice in my head that tells me I can't do it. As I've aged I've tried to put this to the back of my mind and fill my thoughts with positive ones. With this change I'm hoping to become much more succesful.
- EQ and IQ - I would guess that I have an above average IQ (could well be wrong here...). My emotional intelligence will always need word however. I'm an introverted person and don't communicate many of my feelings with others. Being able to empathise and understand others will take me a long way in both personal and professional environments.
To suceced in learning and programming it is helpful to understand your own values, have empathy for yourself and others and have self-awareness. Your values help to establish what motivates you as a person, understanding this will push you to areas in life you want to excel in. Having empathy helps you to connect with others and work with them which is crucial in group work as very little is achieved alone. Self-awareness is understanding how your mind works, the state of your physical and mental health and combining it all. Being self aware allows you to rest when your tired and understand why some concepts are easier than others. Being able to understand yourself is key to getting the best out of yourself.
The most surprising aspect of core learning for me was growth mindset. It seems obvious looking back now but it's incredible how much difference a mindset shift can make. Learning about it was fun and I'm trying to implement a growth mindset into my life and into those close to me. The most challenging part of core learning was my inner voice and self doubt. I still work on this and try and have a positive frame of mind when tackling problems but it still creeps in.
As a programming school it could be easy to focus on the technical learning and ignore the human skills. They are important to learn as having a successful career in any industry requires utilising these human skills. Without a strong basis of communication, integrity and other skills you will not be able to have a succussful career. I have frequently heard that you can teach to skills to someone with a great attitude and good human skills, it's much harder to teach human skills to somebody with strong technical skills.
I feel that most of my time learning core skills has been a waste. Apart from the growth mindset concept I've not learnt anything new. I have done core learnings for so long through voluntering in the community, sports and in the professional arena that I have become a bit bored of them. I know that I still have to work on them and take an intraspective approach but I didn't need a programming school to do this with me. I'd argue that my blog posts have had a bigger benefit to the facilitator who reads them to understand me better than me writing them.