Sometimes to get to the best views, you gotta climb harder than you thought possible. Two great views from two great hikes in Busan, South Korea.

"Failure's not Flattering, but flattery gets you nowhere."

"Why even try; you know you're not good at this."

"Looks like I'm not cut out for this"

"You're never gonna understand it."  

"Just give up and don't worry about it. You're happy and comfrotable, why change that?"

"Seriously, it's too hard. Just log off and spend your summer doing something fun."

    I've said some version of all of this to myself over the past week or so. I switched to C# on Codecademy since it's a smaller self contained course and it's one I want to know anyway, so I paused the web dev track and decided to do this. Right around 60% completion I hit arrays, and did ok. Then loops, and I forced my way through. Then when I got to Classes in C# I really hit a wall. Failed all the quizzes. Quit in frustration. I couldn't understand things like fields and properties, classes as objects, all the things that seemed to be required to understand a job were just not fitting into my brain. 

I wasn't stopping, but I was getting very discouraged. This seems so simple to people that are already coding. They get it and I don't. It's exactly how I used to feel about math. Really, about a lot of things. 

    

    I used to think "If I don't get it the first time, it's not worth doing it." That's that 90's gifted kid mentality: being told "You're smart" instead of "You worked so hard!" is linked to giving up more easily.  I joined gifted in the fourth grade after receiving three years of subpar report cards and comments like "daydreams in the back of class instead of doing work." Everything shifted after I passed that test. I was the only fourth grader in the gifted program. They had us "explore" the world instead of learn. From then on, I started to do better in class, but I was often called "Smart" and figured I had a natural ability. This meant when I came upon something I couldn't do at first, I figured I didn't have the natural ability for it, so I gave up. 

When drums got difficult, I stopped trying. I was a notoriously bad practicer. I got distracted or played the exercise I liked and had fun with instead of the one that made me work hard. It's why I didn't make the UF snare line: I couldn't do it. I could play cymbals much more easily, so I did that. I never wet farther than drawing by copying pictures I'd pause on VHS Tapes or from comics. I never tried a sport beyond the first day of a try out if I thought I sucked.  I couldn't hack it at the college level science and math courses for my initial major of Environmental Science, so I stopped going to class. I stopped doing the work. I wasn't going to get it, so what was the point? I almost failed out, switched my major to undecided, and drifted around from class to class, or even skipping them entirely. I eventually applied myself to some classes my second summer semester and scraped by with two B's, saving me from academic suspension. But before that, I told my mom I was gonna drop out. My dad had dropped out of college, and went back eventually to finish a different degree so he could have the degree, but my mom had dropped out of college to work, so I was gonna be the one to go and finish the first time. But there I was in the spring of 2004 telling her I was going to drop out of UF and just go to Santa Fe CC instead and then transfer to UF later. I remember nothing about the argument except her screaming "YOU'RE ALREADY AT UF!" and that was that. I stayed and had to struggle and try for the first time academically. And I eventually made it. 

This is all EXTREMELY privileged, by the way. I acknowledge that there are many things in this story that sound like I'm trying to say my life was hard, it's not. There are so many who have overcome much more, so my talking about having to try for the first time in my second year of college is a bit... tone deaf. But It's part of my experience and what I'm fighting right now with coding

Coding is the hardest thing I've tried to understand. And the first things I've done (basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the first few parts of C#) have all made sense so far. But now I'm in the part where I have to work even harder and my brain and personality are rebelling against it. I'm flailing and I hit a wall. I was with my friend Brandon working on some code and he asked me to write a for loop. I had done it previously on Codecademy and done ok on it, but now, I couldn't remember anything: how to start it, what to put where, and I felt like an absolute idiot. I honestly wanted to say, "Hey, thanks for the help, but this clearly isn't for me. I'm kinda dumb at it and would rather just stick to poems and fiction."

    Even now, I'm close to tears thinking about Brandon during our conversation, probably thinking, "Jesus he can't even write a for loop. What the hell am I here for?"

No matter how often every one tells you about Imposter syndrome, you never realize how bad it can be until you're right in the middle of it. Brandon, of course, doesn't feel that way about me. He knows I'm brand new and trying to do a lot at once and is being super patient and kind and amazing. But I still feel like a fake, and like I don't even know enough to have imposter syndrome, so I must be faking that, too. I have imposter imposter syndrome. I feel like a child in a room of adults in a suit too big for him pretending to understand the words I'm saying. "Initializer, arrays, yes of course. Hahahaha. Indeed that is a dev nightmare. Oh hohohoho. Booleans. *swirls whiskey glass full of apple juice*"

But, I came here to write this, to tell myself that that's dumb. Every single person who knows code, every person with a job in tech working with developers eventually didn't understand something. And they had to work to understand it. And that's what I'm gonna do now. 

I went backwards on code academy, back to arrays and did it again. Live on twitch. In front of the 2 people who randomly popped in. One of them was a dev who taught me a great trick for Arrays. I'm back on loops again, and I'm taking page of notes with explanations and diagrams to help me understand. I'm listening to motivational music.  Well, it motivates me, at least. 

I admitted I didn't get it, and now I'm gonna go until I get it. 

I wish I could go back and tell ten year old me to work harder. To let the brain sweat and learn a bit. It's ok to be bad at something, because if you keep doing it you will be better every time, even if you don't notice it yet. But I can't. 

But luckily, 34 year old me is listening right now.