Until I have a full-time job, my job is finding that job, and my day is broken into looking for it and preparing for it. In some ways, looking is easier. Writing a cover letter and fretting over a typo I may have missed exhausts me, but I am limited to the résumé and the cover letter. When those are done for the day, I look at a number of things I need to learn to back up those documents I send out.
To-do:
- Improve upon my current skills
- Learn more frameworks and libraries
- Learn more languages
- Don’t forget how to do the old stuff while you’re acquiring new stuff.
- Repeat this loop until 2090.
I’m no longer in a boot camp, so I do most of my learning, relearning, and refreshing with tutorials. I have a list of tutorial class names on graph paper. I colour in a square for every new lesson. These tutorials cover languages, frameworks, updates (ES6), UI to backend. As I watch the progress bars grow stall grow, I notice that my tutorial pattern is a lot like the eating habits of a finicky toddler: Nothing but ES6 except bite of HTML5 for a while, then vanilla JavaScript only with maybe a bite of ES6, then ONLY REACTJS!!!, then Python and node, BACK TO ES6!!, oooh, Flexbox. Nom nom nom …
This used to stress me out, but as long as I circle back, I’m good. If I never want to see a topic again, that’s also good. That language or framework is not for me. I need to know this. If I’m on a roll, why stop just to have balance? If I’m in a ReactJS mood, why deny myself that and force PHP on me because I should?
We are incredibly lucky to have the internet and the means to have online-tutorials, blogs, and challenges. We can sample and choose our style and pace. There is no right way to consume these new skills except what works for yourself. So if all you want to do are ReactJS tutorials, go for it, shuggatoots. The others will be there for you when you’re ready.
Katy Cassidy 