Human Skills learning has helped identify a few things about how I learn and how I approach different obstacles in life. To me it was interesting using a growth mindset and trying to change how I thought about a problem, rather than getting frustrated or helpless when I couldn't solve it. When my mind would use phrases like "I don't get this" and simply adding "yet" to the end of them has much more of an impact than I would have thought. I found using "yet" helped my frustration of not understanding and turning it into something that is changeable, that can be learned, rather than having something so finite. It encouraged understanding and learning instead of something that can't be done. This was also confronting to my ego, and how I perceived my own abilities. With bootcamp rapidly coming up I feel a bit like an imposter,and not confident in my ability to code. However, using the tools learned in Human Skill has helped me try to train my mind on how I go about my self-perception. Using neuroplasticity to change my immediate thoughts about myself to be more positive reinforcement rather than a finite negative one. When my mind says "Why are you even here? What am I doing?" I try to mentally rephrase it into something like "I'm here to learn, and my learning takes its own time."
I find the roles of values, empathy and self-awareness are important in programming and learning. With values like integrity, kindness and effort being used to hold yourself accountable to a standard that helps yourself and others overall. With empathy being empathetic to others plights or struggles and trying to help guide or positively affirm how well they are doing. With self-awareness being aware of your strengths and weaknesses and how to create a learning structure that benefits you most. All of this helps a growth mindset, and I'm sure in a work environment it helps the overall productivity and inter-employee interactions and capability.
What surprised me most about Human Skill is just how impactful it is in a tech environment. I know my first thought with coding and programming was not human skills but more focused on the code itself. However I was again surprised to see how relevant human skills are in programming. Whether it be oneself and how you go about learning or solving problems, how you interact with others on collaborative projects, or even as far as how people will interact and feel when it comes to your site or product. Human skills also comes with its own challenges, particularly with yourself and how confronting it can be when you spend some time reflecting on how and why you think like you do about certain problems or issues. It takes a lot to admit something to yourself and to recognize that active change may be in order to continue your personal growth.
I found it very interesting the focus Devacademy has on Human skills. At first my initial reaction was that the focus was more on a work ethic or how people interact with one another on collaborative projects. While this has truth to it, I personally don't believe it is its focus. I think the focus of Human skills in Devacademy has a larger purpose, one focused on growth and adaptability. Both I think are crucial to learning programming and code. I feel as though without Human skills it would hinder a lot of people's ability to learn code and how they go about problem solving. To me most code is simply a problem that requires a solution. If you want to make a website, where would you start?, How would it look?, What sizes do you want things to be?, What font?. These are all little problems that require solving with code and having the human skills teach us about different ways we can approach these both physically and mentally has been monumental to my own learning.
Some might say Human Skills is a waste of time, Time that could be used practicing programming. I couldn't disagree more! I think as previously mentioned it has been monumental to my ability to learn programming and how I go about solving problems. I believe human skills are part of being a programmer. To me programming is mostly about thinking, and if I don't change how I go about thinking about a problem, then I would be stuck on it forever! Not only is it useful in programming, it's useful in the process of learning. Conversations with my peers have shown an evolution over the course of the Foundations course from how we talk about things to how we express ourselves or how we go about reassuring one another. Knowing that its okay to feel as though you aren't doing well or retaining the information, and that so long as you keep a growth mindset and stay the course, put in the effort to learn, and keep telling ourselves 'yet', that our learning is measured by ourselves and not others, reinforces the idea that you are more than capable.