ghammell'sBlog

After listening to Shereef's video today, two things are for sure: I'm even more excited to begin the program, and I'm a bit more nervous.

One of the first ideas that Shereef emphasized during his video was the distinction between the kitchen and the restaurant:
The restaurant is where you go to be served. You put your money down, and the expectation is that you'll get what you paid for, and that's it. There's no effort on your end, aside from showing up. Then there's the kitchen - where you can go to contribute to the meal being cooked and work with others to make it a great meal. You're actively working to contribute and make a difference, and in return the meal you eat is better than it otherwise would have been had you just sat and waited for it.

Shereef was very clear that dev bootcamp is a kitchen, and unless we come prepared to contribute and actively work to get the most out of the program, we're going to have a bad time. The idea of the program is to solve problems together, to take ownership of and to be the creator of great stuff, not just the receiver. We have to come and make a mess! This idea is what's getting me more and more excited. The idea that what I get out of the program will be what I put into it. This excites me because it means its all on me - I'm not relying on anyone else, and because most of the work is on projects (not just lectures, reading, etc..), it really leaves the opportunity open to excel through effort. I've been waiting for this kind of learning environment for a long time. I can't imagine a better way to learn something than to be fully, whole-heartedly dedicated to it for a period of time. While working full time, it's been difficult to learn to program on my own, mostly due to lack of time, but also due to lack of dedicated resources. So, participating in this environment will be unreal!

That said, the program will be rigorous, and its hard to get over the idea that I may fall behind, or that I may not excel as quickly as others do. The last thing I want is to be a burden on a team of people that I'm collaborating with. The ideal situation for me, I think, would be to land somewhere in the middle. There is a lot to be learned from both sides of collaboration - from both the more advanced and less advanced standpoint. Ideally, I'll be able to collaborate with a lot of people that are more advanced than me that can really help accellerate my learning. On the flip side, I also hope for the opportunity to share my knowledge with others because this will help solidify concepts for me, and may even help me think about things differently. On that thought though, it does make me a bit nervous that even if I do know a bit more than someone else I may not be able to articulate it properly. Having worked on teams before, I don't think this should be an issue, but DBC is a totally different ball game, so we'll have to see.

I think I'm going to have a really good time being a part of the DBC culture. Meeting new people from different backgrounds has always been a joy for me, so to have the opportunity to go through an adventure like this with some amazing people will be awesome. I see my self engaging in the DBC culture by trying to meet and work with as many people as I can. Not only will this be fun, but it may even help me learn about what types of personalities I work best with. Engaging with the DBC culture is one of the aspects of the program that I'm most excited about! All in all, my impression of the program after watching the video is only marginally different. And that's because I already had a great impression of the program to begin with. The discussion helped solidify that impression. Lets do this!