"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?..." - Marianne Williamson
Self-pace learning can be a little bit overwhelming with lots of things to learn and the occasional reluctant attitude to learn and trying other things because its difficult at the time.
At the start of the lockdown in Nigeria, I took it upon myself to learn more about front-end web technologies while staying at home. Things were looking good as I was learning markup and styling from books I downloaded. Midway, Developer Circle Uyo brought up a 30-day coding challenge whereby the participants learn something new each day for 30days and make a Facebook post of what they learned.
To participate in the challenge I choose to learn Html and Css from Free Code Camp free courses. My major attraction was that the courses were project-based, meaning you build as you learn. Additionally, you are tested on every concept you learn after each lesson. It was the perfect resource for learning being that it is self-paced and I could maintain consistency and accountability.
Although I was not a hundred percent consistent with posting what I learned during each day. However, for most of the challenges, I learned something new every day. Some days the concepts would flow and some others I may spend on trying to learn a particular concept. Although I have quite a short period during the day to learn, I learned that an hour of learning can make a real impact. As I worked on my projects each day I was able to finish my project and was able to finish my first portfolio website and I hosted in on GitHub pages.
I felt a great joy showing off my site to my family who has always supported me through this journey with data, food, and time. That site was a simple way of them knowing that I was learning. Although I was always trying every day to stay committed and focused I was most inspired by the commitment of the organizers of the challenge to send out an email with quotes from great people every day during the challenge. Especially Edidiong Asikpok, she is an excellent moderator, consistent with encouraging comments to push me to learn more.
I don't plan to stop here. I want to learn up to the latest technologies and help create the future ones to come. The learning curve might be steep and learning might see slow but I will keep learning something new every day.