Foundations Reflection

What are three new things you have learnt about yourself and your ego due to the core learning?

I have learnt that sometimes I could be too hard on myself; I also learnt about that giving permission for myself to not code sometimes helped a lot; I learnt that I enjoyed solving problems and go into a ‘flow’ state of mind.

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

These are the like the engine of my learning journey. Without reflecting on my values and self-awareness, i could not have enough motivation to get through those hard times. Knowing about myself also gives fuel for my engine. Empathy is so important, too. Seeing and feeling others struggle made me not feeling alone. Showing empathy to myself helped me to take a break at times and then able to make further progress.

What has surprised you the most about the core learning?

What surprised me the most about learning core is definitely Conscious (Mindful) Listening. I used to consider myself as a good listener based on the feedback from my family and friends. However, from the listening and looping experience, it totally blew my mind. There is a lot of space for me to grow.
In this experience, instead of focusing on breath, I put my full attention on what the other person is saying without thinking about myself, or jumping in or thinking about the next move(well, at least I think I tried my best). I was focusing on receiving message from the other person. It was transformational. Especially when the other person told me that my understanding was right. It was also an acknowledge of my effort.In this experience I learnt about accepting and listening to others without any sense of myself. I learnt to view the other one as my mindfulness ‘object’. I learnt about what fully acceptance looks like in a daily conversation.
I was also surprised that when I was open and ready to listen, how willingly and genuine the other person would like to share. I noticed myself sometimes even feeling a bit uncomfortable about knowing others’ ‘secret’. I reflected back and found out that it might be because I had this pressure to say something back to the other person in the past. But I was so bad at giving any feedback and afraid I said something wrong that will upset the other person.However, from this exercise I understand that when other people is talking, they do not want get anything or any suggestions or even words from you. They simply want to be listened and that is more than enough.
When the other person repeated and gave feedback about what I just said, I felt like my tangled thoughts and emotions became more clear and everything just unraveled. Of course I felt charged after that.*

What were the most challenging aspects of the core learning?

It was putting myself out. This including sharing my reflections vis discord and asking somebody to pair. It was a bit uncomfortable for me because I was worried about what others may think about my reflections. I was afraid of being in the spot and being judged, even though nothing happened in reality but there was a lot of things going on in the ‘theatre’ in my mind.

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

Personally speaking, it is because coding and web developing are just tools. The main purpose is to help PEOPLE. So understanding the people side of tech is crucial not only for our programmer’s own good, but also in order to make changes to people’s life.

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.