I was a DjangoGirl for a day
This blog post has been written by Andi Kovács. Thanks Andi! ❤️
The most tiring day so far in my “coding path” was the one I spent together with Python and Django. And other 50-something girls.
I’ve been a participant at the supercool Django Girls event in November in my hometown, Budapest. So cool that I got selected, so then I “had to” fly home for this workshop, it was a perfect combo of family-friends and learning. Quick, but very efficient weekend!
Django Girls is basically a one day workshop which aims to introduce coding to enthusiastic girls. But I’m not going to write about what they do - they already did it much nicer on their website :) I want to write about how they do it. How I felt before/during/after the workshop.
First of all, I didn’t have any idea what to expect. No, not true…The only idea I had is that I’m going to a workshop full of girls and laptops, some developers who tell us what to do and help us, some interesting lectures/pitches (maybe) and that’s it. Well, I was not too far, but if I summarized my day like the above, no one would think it was worth it or at any level cool or interesting. So, what made it interesting? My own coach, my group, the tattoos (!) and the awesome ambiance in general. The little things, those little smiles and nice giveaways made the whole thing different. It was great to feel important in a way, that these girls organized the whole shebang for us.
We, participants, were all beginners in coding, so it made it easy not to feel stupid or clueless while we were working on the project. I had a great instructor/coach/mentor - call her as you want, but first of all she just seemed like a normal girl. Any other girl. And that’s why she was so great, she didn’t want to seem more or different from us. She has “just” more experience (omg, way too more haha) in what we were doing so she volunteered to be a coach during the event. We were only 4 in the group, 3 girls plus a coach. I feel really lucky to have had Julcsi as my coach. She explained everything clearly, she didn’t want to be the teacher, just someone who is always there if we had a (stupid or less stupid) question. She didn’t want to explain the whole coding whatnot, she didn’t want to give little speeches about loops, she let us to work on our own pace and ask our own questions. Thanks Julcsi! ;)
In general, I can say that all the people (organizers, volunteers) in the workshop were very very veeeeeeerrry helpful, kind and not at all arrogant. They loved that we are all there, all beginners without any clue of how we are going to build a blog in a day - btw, we didn’t. But the goal was to start together the whole process, get familiar with Python and go through all the annoying parts together. By the end of the day some of us were closer to the end, some of us not. What I can tell, that pure coding from around 10am till 6pm (lunch included), well, it was tough. Freaking tough if you are not familiar with any programming languages yet. I was already okay with HTML and CSS, but that’s different..It was still very tiring - in the best sense of the word. I was boosted with motivation after I walked out of the building, even though it felt like I couldn’t use my brain even for a simple thing. I was exhausted, my brain was burning and I loved it! I was so happy to feel that desired feeling of “I don’t know shit about coding and I have no clue when am I gonna reach the point of being confident in it!!” - just like when I started to learn French: the only thing I could somehow put together is my name, my age and that I was a student. I had no idea how could I ever reach the same level as my English (which is my 2nd language after Hungarian). I thought I will never ever be able to speak as fluently in French as my teacher. But it happened. (Gros bisous, f*)
So here I am today, eager to study, to discover this new world of the different programming languages. Every day I know I am one step closer, even if I have no idea yet how the puzzle will add up to the nice picture one day: me, being a •front end developer and a freelance web designer•. Woohooo, but at least I know what I want to reach! And that’s enough for now :)