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@wewert
Created April 17, 2017 07:08
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Learning Coding As a Non-Traditional Student
I've more recently took the dive in to learning to code by enrolling into an immersive curriculum at a non-profit shcool. I am a non-traditional student. By that I mean I'm middle aged, married with three small children, and never had a career. I took an opportunity to change my life. I tried learning to code on my own for years. I worked in the software industry but only in admin type positions. Though I was surrounded by software develpers that voiced that would love to help me. I never got a real lesson. I don't blame them. They were busy and half were self taught. It didn't help me that I also had a learning disability and never learned to over come it. Though I had graduated high school and got my BA in English. I've always just scraped by. I honesty have no idea how I got those degress. My grades were terrible. I've always struggled to with school.
Nothing has changed much now that I'm back in school. Well, now I want to actually want to do well and get good grades but so far it's been the same. It doesn't help that the school is intense and purposefully set to stress it's students out but calling it "struggle". I wanted to get out of my basement and have teaching professionals help me with my new quest. I needed hand holidng and directions. I needed professional help learning the foreign concept of coding. All of this was new to me. I thought I would do okay based on my comfort with all that I had learned but after the first week, everything I learned on my own was done. It was all new territory from there.
What I've learned for people like me is that I'm more disadvantaged than people who are young with no family obligations. And what that equates to is more time. Time is something I don't have much of. What little time I have is at the end of the day when I'm the most exhausted and have to dig deep and lose sleep to barely keep up if keep up is possible. I spent many nights trying reading errors over and over again and not understanding what to do next. While everyone else is resting up I fight the drain and just keep trying to solve this puzzle. This puzzle of learning on extreme situation. I think there could be a way for people like me to learn this and I hope after this experience I can come up with some thing. Something to bring hope to the ones that want to better their lives for their family.
I believe that education and the ability to learn never stops. It just takes many forms. All the differnt background and learning styles can be accomedated. I want to be the change that I see. To make other lives better by being an example and coming up with new ways to teach. To see people and their differences and make adjustments to better serve them. Because coding is something achievable for everyone who dares to dream that they are smart enough.
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