Pedal to the Metal

 Feeling The Heat

Here's what I'm up against. There are eight modules, total, in the JavaScript section of The Odin Project's curriculum. I'm almost half-way through the second module. Now, it is true that this is the longest module (with 11 sections compared to an average of 5 section per module), but it's still jarring to realize that I only have 13 weeks and 3 days until January 1st has its debut. It's a lot of work (and pressure!) to learn, build projects with new knowledge, and then feel somewhat prepared to interview in a fairly short amount of time.

Ramping Up

So what does this mean practically? The minimum, is that I'll need to spend more time coding. I've been pretty consistently working on coding for around four and a half hours a week. I'm trying to set a new goal of an average of one hour a day. Which should give me more like seven hours a week. I'm hoping to be able to work my way through the remainder of the JavaScript section with time to spare in December to focus on preparing for interviews and getting a feel for what job postings are looking like. So I'll have to lose some of my leisure time to coding to help me reach this goal.

What I'm Learning

What's struck me recently is that I can read a few articles on a new aspect of JavaScript, feel like I understand it, and then when I try and write out code that accomplishes what I read about, I recognize that I absolutely do not understand how to use this new concept yet. I've come to see that writing very small pieces of code to test how the new concepts work in a development environment is a very productive way to learn a new concept. Before, I had just been jumping into a big project and hoping that I can apply a totally new concept. I'm hoping to use this newfound realization to keep myself from getting stuck as much as I continue to learn just how powerful JavaScript truly is.


Tim David

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