2272: Mistakes Happen

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One thing I’ve learned about myself over the last few years is that I learn most effectively by making mistakes. Once I make a mistake once, I tend not to make it again.

This is quite an effective means of learning, which is why the expression “learn from your mistakes” is a thing, presumably, but in my case I think it comes from the very real fear of being wrong, of doing something wrong, of being judged incompetent at something — even something I know deep down that I’m perfectly competent at.

Impostor syndrome is a very real thing, and I know quite a few people who suffer from it — including myself. It’s the constant and occasionally paralysing fear that you won’t be able to do something, or that you’ve found your way into a situation that you don’t “belong” in, and that you’ll be “found out” by someone at some point, then punished in some way for being somewhere you don’t “belong”.

I’ve felt impostor syndrome a whole lot over the years. I felt it in teaching, even though I regularly got positive feedback on my lessons — feeling like I didn’t “belong” wasn’t helped by the fact that I’m simply not an assertive enough person to control a room full of 30 teenagers, of course. I felt it in games journalism, where I always felt like I was enormously lucky to have the positions I did have — again, even when I received positive feedback on the efficiency, accuracy and engaging…ness of my work. And I’ve felt it in the retail positions I’ve held, being hesitant to perform certain duties for fear of doing them “wrong” and fucking things up for other people.

I think that latter point is the most important part for my brain: it’s not necessarily a fear of failure that gives me difficulty, but more a fear that I’ll do something wrong that affects someone else in a negative way, and that they will, consequently, be upset, annoyed or angry at me as a result. In my experience, it’s actually pretty rare for someone to get upset, annoyed or angry at me as the result of a mistake I’ve made — probably because most of the mistakes I’ve made over the years have actually been pretty minor and, for normal people, nothing to worry about whatsoever.

That’s the thing, though; part of this whole sense of anxiety is feeling like any mistake is the worst thing ever, and that it will be a permanent stain on your record for all eternity. You’ll always be “the guy who messed up that one time”. You only have one chance to prove yourself, and if you blow it, your days are numbered.

I know that these things aren’t true, of course, and becoming very much aware of the fact that I do clearly learn from making mistakes is making me feel a bit more positive about the whole thing. Most of the mistakes I make in my day-to-day life are as a result of not knowing something rather than any actual incompetence, and so it doesn’t serve any particularly useful purpose to dwell on them or feel bad: if they’re the result of not knowing something, then a good means of not making that mistake again (and, by extension, feeling bad about making a mistake) is to find out the thing I don’t know and remember it. And because there’s such a strong incentive at stake, I tend to really remember those things I learn in this way.

It may not be a particularly ideal way of doing things — in an ideal world, no-one would make any mistakes whatsoever and everything would be the very picture of perfection and efficiency — but it works for me. And besides, an ideal world sounds kinda boring, doesn’t it? Because there can be a funny side to mistakes, too, and the other thing I’m starting to realise and accept is that it’s all right to laugh at mistakes both you and others make — in fact, it’s important to, because laughter can help defuse negative feelings and show that really, in the grand scheme of things, the mistake itself doesn’t matter all that much to anyone involved.

Tomorrow I will probably make some more mistakes. Tomorrow I will probably learn some new things. By the end of tomorrow, perhaps I will be a slightly better person.

1807: Learnin’

During quiet periods, I’ve been educating myself in some things that will doubtless prove beneficial to future career plans: specifically, I’ve been learning about the various languages of the Web thanks to a marvellous site that I remember seeing the genesis of a while back, but which I haven’t really delved into until just recently: Codecademy.

Codecademy is a site that truly leverages the idea of interactive learning and makes programming accessible to anyone, regardless of their previous skills. It covers a range of topics, starting at HTML and CSS and working through other useful technologies such as JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, Python and Ruby, and also provides examples of how to use these technologies to leverage the APIs of popular platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Evernote to build your own apps.

There are a number of different approaches you can take through the currently available course material: you can take a specific “skill” (such as HTML and CSS, or JavaScript) and work your way through a series of multi-stage exercises, given clear instructions and the opportunity to immediately see the effects of your work as you go; you can take on a practical project (such as recreating the homepage of a popular site using established Web technologies such as HTML and CSS plus extensions like Bootstrap); or you can do one of the super-quick “this is what you’ll be capable of if you stick with it” projects whereby you “create” something impressive like an animated interactive picture by referencing pre-existing libraries that have conveniently been built for you.

So far I’ve found I’ve responded best to the structured, skill-based work. These courses take the longest out of all of Codecademy’s material, but they provide in-depth experience of getting your hands dirty, and tend to provide enough plausible context for the things you’re doing to make them relatable to real contexts. The JavaScript course perhaps didn’t go into quite as much depth as it could — I would have liked to see greater exploration of how JavaScript code is integrated into a website, rather than (or perhaps as well as) treating it as an entirely separate and independent language, but at least the course game me a reasonably firm understanding of some of the core concepts, and allowed me to get my head around object-oriented programming a lot more than I have done in the past.

I quite enjoy programming, though I haven’t been properly “into” it since the 8- and 16-bit eras, when I used to use variations on BASIC (Atari BASIC on the Atari 8-bit computers, and STOS on the Atari ST) to put together simple games. I fell out of the habit of programming around the time you no longer had to put line numbers in manually, though a few abortive attempts to learn over the years have made me pretty familiar with common conventions such as {curly braces} and ending lines with semicolons();

As with any new skill, the real thing you need to do to ensure the knowledge sticks it to apply what you’ve learned in some sort of practical situation. I’m hoping that the later exercises in Codecademy will provide some of this much-needed context for my learning and allow me to confidently say “yes, I do know [language]”. That sort of thing makes you eminently attractive when being considered for new positions, and while I’m not intending to move on anywhere just yet, it is, of course, always worth keeping one’s eyes open for suitable opportunities to flex one’s intellectual muscles and make use of the things you’ve learned over the years.

Still got a way to go before I’d consider putting any of these languages (except HTML and CSS, which I’m pretty confident in the use of) on my CV, though; better get back to the studying then, I guess!

1375: Desu

A few weeks into my Japanese evening class and I’m enjoying myself. There’s been a fair amount of stuff I’d managed to pick up naturally simply through watching anime, playing games and looking things up myself out of curiosity, but it’s nice to know that I was at least correct in all of these cases.

I’m finding the process of learning enjoyable. It’s been a while since the opportunity to learn something in a classroom-style environment — and no, I don’t count teacher training days — and it’s good to get back to it. I can’t help but feel that, having chosen to do this, I’m appreciating it far more than if I was obliged to be there at, say, school or even, to a lesser extent, university.

It’s also enjoyable to be in a group where there’s a decent mix of abilities. I know first-hand how frustrating it is to teach a mixed-ability group, but it’s quite satisfying to sit in a room with other people and be able to tell — this sounds bad, but what the hell — that I’m not the worst person there. In fact, so far I’m feeling quite confident in my own abilities with regard to pronunciation, remembering phrases and so on.

The part that’s doubtless going to be somewhat more challenging is the learning of the Japanese characters, beginning with the hiragana set. I can remember a couple of “sets” of these without too much difficulty, but others are a bit harder to remember — and it takes me time to parse them into the syllables they represent. I’m sure that’s something that will come with practice, but it’s my one real stumbling block at present. It’s not a massive problem since the majority of the initial work we’ve been doing is in romaji rather than kana, but I rather optimistically picked up the textbook the course is using in its kana incarnation, not realising that it pretty much expected you to have both hiragana and katakana pretty much sorted by the time you start learning words and phrases. I may have to invest in the romaji version for at least the early weeks — that or spend a bit more time doing self-study on hiragana and katakana, anyway. It’ll come in time, I’m sure.

So far we’ve only learned a few basic words and phrases — introducing ourselves, saying good morning/afternoon/night/bye, giving our phone number — but things seem to be moving along at a reasonable pace, and the class is working well together. I still feel a bit nervous about interacting with relative strangers, to be honest, but I’ve been going for three weeks now, including talking to people, and haven’t exploded or shat myself or anything like that, so that’s good.

I’m interested to see how far this initial course takes things. I’ve certainly got the taste for learning again, so may well end up continuing my studies once it finishes in January — or perhaps that’s the time to switch to self-study. We’ll see. Either way, I’m enjoying myself at present, and hopefully it will prove useful (or at least vaguely bragworthy) at some point in the near future.

1361: Hajimemashite

A new experience for me tonight as I started an evening class. That’s a symbol of being a “grown-up” isn’t it? Something like that.

I’ve actually been looking to do something like this for a while, as I’ve been missing the experience of learning stuff. And I’m not talking about the interminable tedium of corporate training or the equal horror of teacher training days; I’m instead talking about actually sitting there in a class, learning something that won’t necessarily be directly relevant to your life and/or job immediately, but which will provide some sort of knowledge you can whip out on occasion and impress people with.

Those who know me will be unsurprised to hear that it’s Japanese I’m learning. My choice of this is partly due to my own interest in Japanese culture, but also for the fact that it might genuinely be useful in the future depending on what directions my career goes in. If I can get good enough at Japanese — this is a big “if”, obviously — I’ll be able to talk to Japanese developers more easily, or move into localisation (something I’d actually quite like to do) or any manner of other things. The prospects are quite exciting — a hefty period of concerted study away, sure, but still exciting nonetheless.

I impressed myself with how much of the first session’s content I already knew having picked it up from various places. Anime and games are not always the best place to pick up Japanese since there’s often a lot of dialect and deliberately “wrong” mannerisms used (Squid Girl’s use of “de geso” at the end of every sentence springs to mind, as does Compa’s overuse of “desu” in Hyperdimension Neptunia) that will probably make you look rather foolish if you were to use them in conversation desu.

This evening, we largely focused on things like introducing yourself, giving some basic details like where you’re from, what you do and that sort of thing, and asking questions. A lot of it was stuff I’d already figured out for myself from a combination of my own deductions and occasional Internet searches prompted by an “I wonder if…” thought. I was pleased to discover that a lot of things I’d figured out for myself turned out to be correct, so I can now reasonably confidently introduce myself, say good morning, good day, good evening and good night, and say “excuse me” and “sorry” — both rather important.

I felt a little of my usual social awkwardness when we were required to talk and practice with the other students in the room, but no-one bit my head off, yelled at me or called me a prick, so I guess it was successful. I’m sure everyone — including me — will loosen up in the coming weeks, too; after all, the very nature of an evening class means that everyone there actually wants to be there to learn something, so it’s unlikely anyone there is going to be a cock deliberately.

So a success for now then. I have absolutely no idea how much I’ll learn over the course of the next few months, but I’m interested to find out, and the structure of a class will hopefully spur me on to keep practicing and studying in my own time too.

On that note, oyasumi nasai.

#oneaday Day 917: Select an Ability to Learn

I like learning stuff. It’s a fun process to start from “nothing” and gradually equip yourself with Knowledge. I’ve done it a number of times over the years, though I will admit that I’ve not taken any of these things really far enough to, say, get a qualification. But I do have a working knowledge of HTML, CSS and several specific software applications that I didn’t know before, all thanks to my ability to self-study.

The trouble with self-study, though, is that it requires time — time that you don’t always have — or time that you might not have the inclination to spend “working” when there are nicer things you could be doing.

It’s when I think about this sort of thing that I wonder what it would be like to go back to university. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people I know who look back very fondly on their university days, but that — assuming they went at 18-19 — the actual “studying” part of things isn’t the main reason for the rose-tinted spectacles. I know it’s certainly not true in my case — while it was a lot of fun to, say, get up on stage in a nice concert hall and perform music, or sit in a small room and argue semantics with a group of fellow English students, the things I remember most fondly are the extracurricular and social activities I did. Theatre Group and their various productions. Trips to the Edinburgh Fringe. Drinking in Chamberlain Bar. That time my friend Plummer came down and we got wasted on the Union’s £1 triple vodka and oranges then consumed roughly a pound of cheese between us at about three in the morning. That time a shopping trolley showed up in our flat so we mounted a huge clandestine operation to get rid of it without being identified.

Now I’m a little older, I can’t help but think that going back and, you know, doing it “properly” might be fun. That said, the possibility of shenanigans is also appealing. Andie and I were discussing this the other day — university is one of the only times in your life when you have pretty much all of your friends together in one place, making it an absolute snap to arrange impromptu social events. Nowadays, I don’t see my friends anywhere near as often as I like, and it’s sad. But I digress.

Yes. Doing it “properly” might actually be fun. Picking a topic, studying it, doing assignments, getting graded, improving. Learning something. Coming away from the experience with both practical experience of applying subject knowledge and an actual qualification to prove you’ve done it. Sounds pretty good to me. If I had the opportunity, I’d study something practical that I know very little about — probably something computer-related, since I’ve always been IT literate and willing to tinker about, but my actual specific technical knowledge of things like, say, programming is rather limited.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty unlikely to happen any time soon. Going to university is very expensive, and I don’t see myself surviving on the relative pittance that is the student loan any more.

That said, I do have a work-from-home job with flexible hours and good pay.

Hmmm.

Hmmm.

No. No, I can’t do that. Not just to satisfy some sort of whim or early-30s crisis or whatever it is that’s going through my mind right now.

What I can do, though, is take some steps to learn something new on my own time. Self-study. Perhaps signing up for some sort of evening class. I’d like to do it, certainly, it’s just a case of finding — or perhaps making — the time.

Now, what to learn…?