Be a creator, not a consumer
Week 1
Kitchen vs. Table analogy
September 18, 2014
When I decided to learn to code, there were a few "bootcamp" style schools I looked at that had different teaching philosophies. Some seemed like opportunistic fly-by-night operations that merely stuck you in a room with someone who knew how to code. Some seemed legit in training the skills to succeed as a developer. Some surprised me. Dev Bootcamp's emphasis on training the mind and reevaluating the student-teacher relationship was an unexpected part of the curriculum, and at first it seemed superfluous to my goal of quickly learning to code and getting a job. But the idea definitely spoke to me and stuck with me as I applied to schools.
After reading more about DBC and going through the (refreshingly casual) interview process, I came to realize DBC was not modeled after any kind of schooling I had been a part of before. I went to a big public university, sat in boring Powerpoint presentations for most of my four years, and nearly never talked to professors. That was definitely the dominant culture there. I don't feel like I learned that much, despite the fact that I studied hard and did well. So DBC's collaborative "kitchen" environment Shereef spoke about in his fireside chat video (vimeo.com/85001014) is definitely an experiment I'm willing to try - I'm ready to create together in the kitchen, rather than just be a consumer at the table in a restaurant.
In Shereef's video, I heard brief mention of the "Pedagogy of the Opressed" book, which I had come across in a college Sociology course. One chapter in particular was about the "banking approach" to education. The metaphor used is that students are considered empty bank accounts that are to be filled up with knowledge by teachers. It's a one-way flow of information from teachers to passive, inactive students. The book rejects this notion and says this approach is dehumanizing and results in entitled students and unmotivated teachers. I'm excited by the idea that DBC is so collaborative. I want to cooperate and share what knowledge I may have because I know helping others is a way of helping yourself and solidifying your learning. I also know that engineering teams - and any teams for that matter - NEED to be able to communicate well, and DBC's approach will teach us the hard skills without overlooking the "soft skills" to succeed in the tech field.
I'm going into the experience trying to be open minded, but I also have some nerves about certain things - particularly pair programming, which I've never done. I'm nervous my pair will expect some programming experience from me that I just don't have. Jumping into something without having first studied enough to have some base knowledge frightens me. I've used technology a lot in my career and believe I'm a fast learner (a journalist has to be, after all) but I've barely just started to look "behind the curtain" to see how the software works. I've done my best to study Ruby, HTML/CSS, and Javascript on Codecademy, but I'm still worried I'll be one of the least prepared students. But my lack of knowledge in this collaborative culture is also motivating. It will keep me accountable and push me to know enough to contribute reliably to a group. I know I'm going to have to just put myself out there, put my ego aside, and not be afraid to be wrong.
At this point the Dev Bootcamp "kitchen" experiment is definitely something I buy into. I'm looking forward to that adrenaline rush that comes from cooking up something exciting after hours and hours of work. I just hope this kitchen has plenty of coffee.
