I Learned a Thing

This blog post was written by Courtney Thomas and was first published on Science Daily Dose. Thank you Courtney! ❤️

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When I was little, my mom asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Ever the over-achiever, I gave her a list of my future professions. “I will be a doctor, a lawyer, a ballerina, a postman, and a mommy.”

When I finished my studies at Furman and drove with my mom from South Carolina to Los Angeles so I could start my PhD at UCLA, she asked me again. I told her, “If I could be a student forever I would be ok with that.”

If I stay in the same routine too long, I start to get restless. I always want to push myself to grow. For that reason, I am often searching for new things to learn, new experiences to try. As uncomfortable as it can be to break out of our routines, it is this discomfort that gives us the space we need to grow.

This weekend, my new learning experience came in the form of coding. I have never taken any computer science courses. I would not say that I am particularly talented in the technological sector, other than the fact that my Google prowess. I have been able to do lots of troubleshooting by finding others with similar problems and using their solutions. But these things are not intuitive for me. So I signed up to learn how to create a website using Python and Django, in a workshop with DjangoGirls in Bern.

Never having done any coding before, I was a little nervous to get started. We were arranged in groups of four: three of us there to learn, and one coach. I had already done a part of the tutorial to install all of the components needed, and to learn the basics of Python (a coding language). I also had a little bit of coding practice with a great game built by a friend of mine called Code Champions.

Fueled by coffee and enthusiasm, (and with the help of our stellar coach, Rae) our little team got to it! Fortunately, I made lots of mistakes. Why is that fortunate? Because mistakes (whether it was a typo or having missed a line of code from the tutorial) brings up error messages. And it was trying to understand the error messages that helped me to learn the most.

One of the sponsors for the day, FabLab Bern, was also on site. One of their contributions was custom laptop stickers, made with what looked like a laser printer where the ink jet was replaced with a blade. The result? I got an awesome ScienceDailyDose sticker for my laptop!

I’ve been blogging for quite some time, but this is the first time I’ve tried to learn the coding behind it. While I won’t be switching my website design to one that I have developed any time soon, I definitely have the tools to work towards that in the future.

// If you are interested in coding, you can try the DjangoGirls tutorial (also available in many other languages other than English) on your own, or see if there is a DjangoGirls event near you!