Increase your efficiency as a student at Turing

learn-you-a-turing.md

Learn You a Turing for Great Good!

It’s hard to keep track of everything you’re learning

• Once a day, try and recap what you learned that day; write about it!
• Once a week, recap the week
• Every module, recap the module
• Keep your "Turing environment" clean and organized

"You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy; then you should sit for an hour.”

Example directory structure:

Turing
├── misc
    └── lightning-talks
├── 1mod
├── 2mod
├── 3mod
└── 4mod
    ├── challenges
    ├── lessons
    ├── pre-work
    ├── projects
    └── warm-ups

If you think of something you can do now, DO IT

• Give good feedback on the surveys at the end of each week
• This does not mean that you should just complain about something
• If you have a problem, offer a possible solution
• You are the reason all of this exists and works; your voice and opinion has a lot of power
• If you believe you don't have time, then it's probably true; that is what you've made your reality
• Time is relative; what do you want? You have so many heartbeats left, that is the only clock that matters

####always work iteratively

• I realize that when you learn something fun and new (jQuery, AJAX, Angular, etc.) you have ambitions to get it into an app ASAP
• Don’t do this
• Metaphor with a car. Rather than building a set of doors, and a set of wheels, and an engine, and then putting it all together
• Build iteratively. Build a bike. Then add two more wheels to the bike, then add an engine, and so on...

####There is no such thing as intelligence.

• That is a fake and dumb word.
• People often think there is some invisible threshold that separates “those who can” from “those who can’t”. Those who “can” learn, and are genetically superior to learn more and lear faster, and those who “can’t”, who self-fulfil this prophecy by assuring themselves that they can “never be quite as good as that guy over there on the “can” side
• Intelligence does not exist; it is behavior and grit that are really doing the work

####Learn how to be a programmer, not how to code

• We do not know what will happen in the future
• You cannot rely on your ability to follow a specific set of steps to create something
• Learn how things are built, but more importantly, learn why they are built that way
• Practicing this will allow you to break down code and understand it rather than memorize it
• Don't just bang on the drum, become a drummer