Hackbright Week 4: Revelations of a Different Kind of "Click"

If there's one thing that has stayed constant in all the studying I've done throughout my years of education (elementary school, middle school, high school, and college), it's the inexplicable ability to retain the most information while in the most random and transient places to be studying--on a moving bus, in the dining hall, in between classes, you name it.

Last week, we were introduced to SQL, and I'm not gonna lie, at first I thought it was pretty straightforward and easy because of how simple its syntax is. However, once we were introduced its connection to Python, I felt not only overwhelmed but also really inept among my peers who appeared to be zipping through the lab exercises like they were nothing.

Feeling frustrated with myself, I started studying on my commute to class the next day. And lo and behold, when my partner and I continued our SQL pair programming exercise, I was suddenly able to rattle off the solution without thinking. As I studied our code during lunch, I was actually surprised at my own code...can you believe it? I couldn't! It's like the solution came out from a part of my brain that I didn't even know existed. It was a miraculous realization and a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't completely lost just yet.

Now, I'm not saying that everything just suddenly "clicked". This is not a fairytale and I did not just suddenly transform into a software engineer after studying on a bus (I wish!). As I've mentioned before, I'm surrounded by so many smart women around me every day. I'm not gonna lie, it's a little intimidating and disheartening at times to almost hear the gears click in their heads during lecture and ask intelligent questions, or see the lightbulb go off as they fire away code at their keyboards during lab and ask for a final code review well before the end of the day.

Why can't the gears in my head click this way? I don't know, but what I've realized is that maybe they don't need to. I often worry that if something doesn't "click" right away, maybe it never will. But what I've come to realize is that it don't need to click within the first hour, day, or even night. The lightbulb, gear, or whatever little machine is in my head is working hard, and its time will come.

The little nuggets of powerful information I can collect little by little each day can and will be enough, and will able to work together to drive that wheel of ambition one step closer to its destination.