Today is “Day 1” of JavaScript for my cohort, but I have finished the weeks curriculum with the exception of one lab. I this lab I have to recreate some actions that are shown in the demo. I had little to no issue going into this lab and am surprised at the sudden challenge that is before me. I have to break it down into figuring out what to do when I don’t know what is going on.
The Lab Before This
In the lab prior to DOM Challenge, I had to do a task lister. I found that it was challenging, and I wasn’t quite feeling prepared for the lab. I worked hard at it for probably around an hour or two before looking at the solution and figuring out why the solution worked. I could get around 90% of it, but was not sure why some of the functions were labeled as constants. It looked like syntax we hadn’t used before.
I googled around and was unfortunately unsuccessful in being able to find that syntax again. I made as much sense of it as I could and tried to move on past it. This is what lead me on to the DOM Challenge lab.
Recreate What You “Know”
The first step that I tried was recreating the functions from the Task Lister Lite lab in this one for creating comments. The sad truth was that it did not work for me, even in the slightest. I worked for probably another hour on trying to get one piece to work, but ultimately I found myself more frustrated that I couldn’t figure the lab out than anything else.
I ended up closing the lab and sat hoping that what we worked on during this first week would be able to clear things up. Today is the first day of the curriculum, so it will definitely be a start!
So Why Write This?
I write this in part for myself and in part for any of my peers reading through my blog. For my peers, a lot of them came to me for help on previous sections and would say things to me about being knowledgable and that I must just get it. It sounds like bragging, but I want to share this experience to show that I’m learning with them as well. JavaScript is where I have hit my first big stumble in my strides to become a programmer. I was always able to talk my way through some logic in ruby since it is easily readable, but JavaScript seems a bit more challenging in syntax.
I also write this for me as a reminder of two things: it’s okay to not know everything, and it’s okay to get stuck. That’s what the people around me are for. Plus, if I was just running along with no issue, it wouldn’t make much sense for this to be something I’m investing time and money into. I’m learning a completely new language which in and of itself is a feat. I got my patch for Ruby and Rails. I have to still earn it for JavaScript.
Keep on Keeping On
Being stuck in a rutt stinks. There’s no way around it. You feel like you just can’t get something to work, and it’s all your hands touching the document. There’s nobody else you can blame for it not working than yourself. However, you can’t credit anybody but yourself for the successes as well.
Getting stuck means you’re about to learn something as well. It means you’re about to have a breakthrough.
So with that, I’m stuck, but I’m getting back on the horse today. Keep on keeping on!