It happens at school. It happens at work. It happens in life. And it will at some point happen to YOU at Flatiron.
There’s going to come a time when you are tired of this boot camp and lack the motivation to continue with it - maybe because of a difficult lesson, or because of all the time you‘ve had to put into it (and STILL have to), or both, or neither. It’s inevitable, I’m afraid; I’d call it the “gospel truth”, but this doesn’t exactly fit the definition of “good news”. In my case, it happened when I started Scraping.
When such a time arrives, it really helps to look at the “Big Picture”. If you’re struggling to learn and/or care about what you’re learning, first try to see how the current lesson fits in with all of the other material that you have learned thus far, and how it fits in with programming in general. I’ll demonstrate this by using my previously-mentioned problem with Scraping.
Up until a few weeks ago, I had learned about objects, behaviors, and attributes. I knew how to create objects using data, how to make properties with that data, how to change the data, and how to perform various tasks using that data. Additionally, I had learned a bit about where to store that data when I studied some lessons that mentioned databases.
Here’s where Scraping fits in: it’s the process that allows me to find and obtain data from websites; this same data is used to make fully functional objects! Scraping doesn’t just involve examining HTML, looking for specific tag names or attributes or inner HTML text, and making a list out of them; it’s much more than that! It allows me to extract the information that I need from a website in order to make objects and other useful program elements (variables, methods, constants, etc.).
If that isn’t enough to get you motivated, then look back at your goals for this program and see how (or IF) what you are doing helps to accomplish them. I’m a guy who likes solving puzzles, so it really helps to look at this whole boot camp as a GIANT puzzle. What I just described above can be compared to examining an individual puzzle piece (colors, shape, size, etc.) and figuring out where and how it fits into the rest of the puzzle! Figuring out that little mystery creates a sense of peace/piece (pun intended) and direction, both of which are essential to motivating you forward.
So, the next time you get burned out, remember the “Big Picture”. And don’t give up; you’ve GOT this!
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