What are three new things you have learnt about yourself and your ego due to the Human Skills learning?

1. Learning about my values and really drilling into what I care about was cool. I never thoiught empathy was my biggest driver but after doing the tests that turned out to be the case which surprised me a lot.
2. I got a little jealous at times of how cool other peoples work looked but realised I can take inspiration from them to make my own work better if I put in the time to learn what I am doing more.
3. The neuroplasticity blog was a game changer. Learning how to better retain information through reflection and just general behaviour and habits was eye opening to say the least.

What are the role of values, empathy, and self-awareness in learning and programming?

• Values: These are the principles and beliefs of people that guide their behaviour and decision making. In programming the key values to me would be empathy and determination. Empathy plays a huge role as there is a lot of pair programming and being able to understand where someone is coming from will help you succeed massively in this industry. Determination is huge, so many times throughout foundations I felt like giving up, because I just could not get things to work. My programmer friend told me "get used to it", this industry, in essence, is about problem-solving so there will always be situations where things don't work. Having the grit to figure out why it isn't working and fix it is the best part.
• Self-awareness: Having the ability to reflect on your own thoughts is huge for both learning and perception. Being self aware means you can identify areas where you need to improve leading to a growth mindset. Emotional regulation also comes from self awareness and being in control of yourself is crucial for preventing outbreaks but also just keeping your stress in check.

What has surprised you the most about the Human Skills learning?

How much better I feel actually having a plan in place, both a learning plan and a plan to mitigate stress. I always underestimated the power of a short break and a little bit of exercise to get the brian firing again.

What were the most challenging aspects of the Human Skills learning?

Putting words to how I feel I guess? I feel as though I always managed to keep to the timebox suggestions for all the technical work but the human skills work I seemed to go way over the time for as I find it hard to really put to words what I want to say.

Why do you think we, a programming school, are spending so much time focusing on Human Skills learning in a web development Bootcamp course?

This course is designed to produce industry ready people. I've been speaking to friends in the industry and it surprised me that employers are really keen on finding people that can "act like humans". A quote from one of my mates that really bluntly puts in to perspective the importance of being able to interact with people in a workplace environment.

Does the time you spent studying Human Skills learning here feel like a waste of time? Should you have just used that time to practise programming instead? Justify your answer.

No most definitely not. I think there has been more than enough time to practice programming for the material required in the foundations portion of the course. Human skills feels like a great addition to fill the other time in these six weeks. I personally feel that doing all the blogs contributed to my ability to learn programming anyway, the learning plan, neuroplasticity and to be honest just having much more blog pages to write and add to my main blog page helped me cement how to do things in my head anyway.