The autobiographical narrative below describes my initial feelings in my first coding class. It’s the story of a young woman who overcame the fear of learning something new.
I situate myself at the screen, ordering my chai latte before class. My routine starts out normal, but today marks the first day of classes this semester, a first for many things. In my tiny major, everyone knows everyone, but today I will encounter a new professor for a class that I know nothing about.
After the traffic jam of orders, I grab my latte and look for a seat in the café. People flooded the area, leaving no open seats, so I harness all my energy to walk to class. Class occurs in the same building, but walking up two flights of stairs as a small woman with short legs and a 6lb laptop takes the wind out of me. I arrive at door 207 and enter the room.
The classroom reflected the size of my apartment bedroom, and the dresser alone consumes half my living space. Dark screened desktops and tiny, old drawing tablets line the white encrusted brick walls. We must take this class to graduate and yet, I only see six students here.
After sipping my warm drink, I take a seat and open my bag. I pull out the monstrosity of a laptop and hide behind the screen. My face pops out to look at my classmates. So far, only men make up this room. I recognize one of them, Leo Callums.
Red hooded Leo’s work shined in my other class. He seemed quiet in that class, but here he converses with all the other students. He likely felt like an outlier in our previous class, as I feel now.
I hear him talking about a new update in some video game unknown to me as two more people walk by.
I turn around to look and two girls start approaching. I feel relieved that they sat down next to me, and I even knew one of them from a different class. Gabs is rocking a hooded sweatshirt from an anime I don’t recognize, and Maya sits comfortably in an off-white sweater. Small talk forms between us, and we all quickly realize two things: none of us know what this class entails, and it scares us.
Class starts, and the professor pulls up a PowerPoint. He starts telling us what he demands of us in his French accent. This beginners coding class should suit me well since I come from no coding background.
The professor goes on stating, “While it’s okay to not have any previous knowledge of coding, beginners tend to struggle a lot more than others.”
Okay, maybe I spoke too soon. He goes around asking people their coding experience. Leo, along with all the other guys, informs us that he already learned how to code in other classes. Gabs also says she coded before.
As my turn approaches, my hands clam up. Why do I feel guilty that I don’t know how to code in a beginner’s class? I catch my nerves and tell the professor straight, “I have no experience in coding from college or high school. As one of the only students who understands nothing about programming, I’m pretty intimidated.”
The professor tries to make me feel better by telling the class how only women used to code in the office. It doesn’t help. I take another sip of my beverage to gain some needed warmth. The latte is only mildly warm, getting colder by the second.
After the class finishes introducing themselves, the professor jumps right into Processing (the framework this class uses for java). I take notes as fast as possible, but my hands fail me. I concentrate on the notetaking to the point that I absorb no information. We run through the basics of code, and just like that, the class period ends.
I walk out of class with Gabs and Maya. I take the last sip of my cold latte and throw it in the trash as we talk about our feelings from today. Turns out the professor intimidated them too. Maya seems to not care so much, but Gabs nervously awaits our next class. The professor mentioned an in-class assignment tomorrow. Class annoyed me a lot today; I told Gabs and Maya that I would just wing the assignment.
I tend to never wing assignments; I still gaze over my notes. I wrote so fast that the handwriting appears almost illegible; I rewrite them. Rewriting notes counts as studying, right?
The new day shines and I already ordered my daily dose of caffeine. I grab my chai latte, walk up the stairs, get to class, and sit down. I don’t think too hard about the little assignment today. If I do, I know an uneasy feeling will lurk in my stomach.
Gabs and Maya sit with me acting very anxious, which makes me anxious. The professor walks in and starts class. Of course, we begin with the assignment.
The professor says, “The assignment should only take ten minutes, and it uses the information we learned from yesterday”.
I could barely understand what happened yesterday. I take a sip of my drink, nice and warm.
I turn on my laptop and start coding.
The assignment involved making a program in a 1:1 ratio, with four black squares at each corner encased by white strokes, making a plus sign shape. When the user hovers over any square with their mouse, that square should turn white. When the user hovers over a different square, the previous square should become black again and the new square becomes white.
I look at my notes and create four black squares; I only use eight lines of code. That took 2-3 minutes, so I still have plenty of time to work on the rest of the program. How do I even start the rest of the program? I examine the other students, who also seem to struggle with the assignment.
I think to myself, If one square is on, then all other squares are off.
If.
I glance through my notes to look for “if” and it turns out a function called if-statements exists. It seems to work logically with the code I already implemented so I add it in. I try to run it, but the system fails to start. An error lies within the code.
The time left to work is minimal, maybe only a minute or two. I look though the notes and find another function: else-if. I realize I completely messed up my code and that the program needs both functions, but which one goes where?
With only a minute left I add the else-if function before the professor says, “Times up, who got it to run?”
No one speaks. Time passes before the professor starts asking people how far they got. Leo states he got part of it to run but ran out of time to finish it. When compared to what other students said, it seems like Leo’s the only one in the class who understood the assignment.
The professor asks me how far I got. How far did I get? I never ran my code. I hit the play button and the computer stalls. The program loads something. Whatever it is, it’s probably not good.
The program pops up – it looks completed – and the squares turn white as I run my mouse over them. My professor beamed as I showed him the finished program; at least someone figured out the assignment.
I walked out of class feeling accomplished. Somehow, I overcame all the other students with a “simple” programming task. Maybe no one else studied. Regardless, I could sense a new path shaping for me. I drink the last sip of my chai latte and wonder “What else can I create with code?”