Week 7 (03.06 to 03.12)

As a reminder, here are the goals I stated in the March goals post.

  • Completing the Technical Documentation Page project on FreeCodeCamp.
  • Get to the Node.js chapter on The Odin Project.
  • Finish JavaScript Strings + start JavaScript Decision Making on Udemy.

I considerably got behind my schedule these past few weeks due to my tourist visa in Japan expiring on the 15th. So I had to prepare to leave and plan my trip to South Korea. I still tried to make progress on my learning but I started to feel a little overwhelmed with all the learning I’ve been doing. Especially juggling with 3 resources at once. I thought it would be a great strategy.

I was starting to consider whether or not I should prioritize a resource over another. I learnt that it’s good to have multiple learning resources, but trying to catch up with all three at once may be a bad idea. It’s still something that I have to verify.

Nevertheless, this week, I tried to advance my CSS knowledge by tackling the Balance Sheet project on FreeCodeCamp. It was great as I finished it in one go. I learnt a lot about CSS properties and how they interact. A lot of the values were given, and so too were the calculations for the margins. I felt too guided but it’s still learnt knowledge so I’m happy with it. I didn’t use FreeCodeCamp at all in the following weeks.

I also made some progress on The Odin Project as well, going through the Fundamentals Part 2 and JavaScript Developer Tools lessons this week. As I was already studying JavaScript in the Udemy bootcamp, a lot of the 2nd part of the Fundamentals was simply recall to me. So I could finish it rather quickly. I spent a little more time with the Developer Tools. It was much more thorough than a brief overview I’ve experienced in other courses so I learnt a lot.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t go further in my education towards the end of the week, as I got a lot of things outside learning that came up, and I wanted to spend some time with friends too. I didn’t know if I would be able to come back to Japan so I used my time wisely then.

Weeks 8 and 9 (03.13 to 03.26)

These weeks were void of any learning. I think I got a bit overwhelmed with everything going on in my life, preparing my trip to South Korea, thinking about my comeback, and planning for my 2nd stay in Japan. Learning Web Development was on the back-burner.

So, I was travelling in Seoul, South Korea from the 15th to the 22nd, meeting friends after 7 years, reminiscing the good times I’d spent as an exchange student there and rediscovering the capital city. I met my friend Adam who’s also a developer, but in the gaming industry. We caught up and talked about our projects about finding a job in Japan as developers. Also exchanging some tips for learning as well since he’s much more experienced that I currently am.

During the downtime, I took some time thinking about my learning strategy and considering alternatives in how I handle my learning: should I prioritize one resources and give it 100% of my time and attention, or should I keep juggling between Udemy, FreeCodeCamp and The Odin Project?

I’m also considering the type of learning on each platform since, Udemy is video-based with a few exercises here and there BUT a big project spread over 20+ sections, The Odin Project which is text-based, there’s a lot of reading and many projects throughout the whole “bootcamp” that helps you create your portfolio, and FreeCodeCamp which is only project-based but heavily guided. I’m unsure of which one is the most effective for me.

I realised that juggling between those learning resources may hold me back or keep me from learning faster. I was not decided yet by the end of week 8. I just started to experiment.

Week 10 (03.27 to 04.02)

Almost 1 week after my successful but stressful return to Japan, I started experimenting with prioritizing Udemy over the other resources. My goal for March regarding the Udemy bootcamp was to finish Section 23, just before tackling the DOM (Document Object Model). Looking back, the reason I was struggling to move forward, besides the Japanese VISA matter, was that these sections were quite theoretical (and because I already know some programming languages, it was repetitive too).

Secondly, it was new material as well. And referring back to the Learning course on Coursera, it’s totally expected to feel some resistance, some pain when learning new material because it’s challenging. And so I had to push through to complete these sections.

I had put The Odin Project and FreeCodeCamp aside for almost 3 weeks now. I still feel guilty at times not making any progress on these platforms so I’m considering learning on them from time to time.

Still, I learnt a lot of JavaScript this week, especially learning about anonymous functions and function expressions. The syntax is quite new to me, and the first time I learnt them, I didn’t understand anything. Now that I know them and understand how to write and use them, I feel very happy I went over that hurdle.

We’re going into April, and after almost three months of learning, I can look back and confidently say that I made really good progress since January and I’m looking forward to learning more, especially since I’m at the stage where HTML, CSS and JS will converge and I’ll use all three to create websites and web apps.

So then, I’ll need to plan my goals for the upcoming month! I think most of them will be about catching up on those goals I haven’t achieved in March. It was indeed stressful, overwhelming and challenging, but I’m happy that, over the whole month, I still made progress.