Week Two at gSchool

Ever wonder what those first couple weeks in an intensive coding bootcamp are like? Ellie Schneiders is a student at gSchool in Boulder Colorado, and blogs here about her second week...

Remember, the Course Report community is eligible for a $500 scholarship to gSchool!

After graduating from college in 2009, I lived and worked in New York City.  While living in the city, I was able to participate in two yoga teacher trainings.  I realize now that one of the key things I have learned to practice through yoga, which I believe will help me as I learn to code at gSchool, is cultivating a beginner's mind.

During the first two weeks of gSchool, we have been swimming in information about github, test driving development, ruby basics, and a basic framework for many of the moving parts that need to work together to build software.  I think everyone in class has experienced new concepts clicking (big and small) and has also experienced being thrown off a cliff unsure whether anything would be there to break the fall.  I know I have!  Although, I think the thing that saves me is this idea of approaching learning to code with a beginners mind, which in my point of view translates to approaching learning to code with a sense of wonder and play, assuming we know nothing for certain.  In fact, when we tried to fork our first repo from Git in the first week, ruby had an updated version and so even Mike and Jeff (as teachers!) had to keep a beginner's mind posture toward code they had put together for us to use!  

My hope is that over the next 22 weeks, I am able to maintain a daily practice of keeping a beginner's mind because I think this leaves a lot more room for Mike and Jeff to teach me new concepts and the creative process of writing software that wouldn't be possible otherwise.  I read a quote once that said that "in a beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in an expert's mind there are few."  I think this is so true in learning to code! 

Stay tuned for more First-Week perspectives!

The next six-month course at gSchool starts June 9th in Denver. Does gSchool sound like the school for you? Check out their website or school page on Course Report!