The first thing I learnt about myself during the core learning was how much I had already progressed down some of these ideas without attaching a name to the idea before. I had started on ideas of growth mindset about 7 years ago and was perhaps aware that I could affect my own brain around that time too. Seeing these ideas with actual names and hearing proper descriptions of them really let me start to master them and be more effective with them.
The second thing I learnt was that I am very capable of expressing my ideas in writing and speech. This is something that I would have been notoriously bad at a few years ago. I had trouble identifying or even admitting to emotions at that point in time. After working on myself and having a platform to express these emotions through blogs or homegroups, I realized how much I have grown and become more emotionally intelligent with myself. This has also lead to a growth in my ability to identify emotions in others. As with all things, this is a work in progress, but I'm getting there.
The third new thing I have learnt was about my learning plan. I was able to express what I wanted and how I thought I might achieve it. Having never been a goal setter before this was an interesting development for me! I never knew that I might be able to articulate what I want and how I might go about achieving it.
The role of my personal values, empathy and self-awareness are to help me be kind to myself when things get tough. Learning and programming and both particulary tough, and combined they are even tougher. It's good to have empathy with yourself and the self-awareness to know when you are struggling and to then be kind or seek help. Having that layer of self-awareness to know when things are tough was really important to know when to reach out, or to console myself with a break. My personal values came in handy when I was interacting with other or with the content. To think of others, be aware of the learning environment and programming and how it might affect me and others.
I think I was most suprised about the power of 'yet'. This was pretty mind-blowing for me. To know that you could achieve results so drastically different by just being a bit kinder with where you were in the learning process. This was so amazing for me throughout the sprints, especially in week 5 when things were quite tough for periods of time.
I don't know if I would have considered any of it challenging. I found it all very engaging and useful. I am very open to ideas like these, and was already reflecting as part of my past job, and who I am as a person. I would often spend up to an hour reflecting in various forms each day, doing things like what the core content got me to engage in.
I think Devacademy spends so much time on the core skills because the core skills are what makes the difference between a good work environment and a bad one. Having worked with many different people in many different environments, I can say that one reflection I would have had was that the environments where everyone was empathetic and very aware of who they were were always the best. They may not have had the most skilled people or the highest production. But they were real growth environments for everyone, both progessionally and personally. I think this is the focus of the core learning, to make us all better employees once we have the tech skills to enter the industry.
I don't think it was a waste of time at all. Personal development, for me, is going to be a life long journey. The more skills I have to grow and the more time I spend on it, these results will be multiplied as my life goes on. In many ways, if I don't end up programming, the core skills are transferable EVERYWHERE. That kind of skills is invaluable to every business.
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