Human Language, Endocrinology, Learning Code and programming
Published: 2020-06-14 15:19:29

"Code is Not Magic" 

That is my personal mantra, if there is a 'spell' or some trick that exists I'm open but even in the 'The Worst Witch' learning spells was an acquired skill(note that's the 1980's version and the updated one). 
 


Having a non CS degree background, making sure that what I'm learning is making sense to me and finding the best pathway for that process has been a consistent search, 'a better way' but for individuals. My background is varied, at one point in my life I was 100% sure that I wanted to be a Medical Doctor. I declared my major as biology in undergrad and never second guessed it. Although before that, I had a lot of options in my high school education and I was able to explore the medical field academically for two years, taking human anatomy, sport medicine and medical terminology even. By the time that I received my undergraduate degree I had almost 6 years of consistent exposure to biology, biomedical sciences. 


A lot of people would always praise me for majoring in biology, saying things like 'wow! that's a lot of math right!?' actually yes and no, I basically took enough math to probably move forward with CS minor with a couple of add on classes. The biology part? mostly basic computation and A lot, A lot of reading and information absorption. 

Information absorption is where this blog post lives, it's what I'm comfortable with because of my background. I think information absorption is one of the more difficult things people struggle with in life, especially now with so much, education, work expectations, news, general life knowledge(which screw driver do I need to fix this door handle?). Growing up I took Spanish and I gravitated towards language, I always breezed through English classes. I took Spanish for 6 years starting in middle school and ended with Advanced Placement Spanish my senior year. I was almost fluent I felt, well fluent enough. Starting in high school there was this shift to information absorption, I was taking honors English, Human Anatomy, sports medicine, Spanish, I don't know what math lol(I really don't remember) but there was a focus on language and breaking down language is complex! I learned Spanish at a young age and so understanding the complex aspects of language became normal but I took Spanish I in college as a quick elective credit my Senior year and I saw how students with zero exposure to learning on that level struggled, not only to think outside their own language but understanding structures of language in general where they understood what they were saying in Spanish and why, that subject verb agreement was different, not why it is was different but just understanding it was. 

A year before in college I took what is probably one of the most interesting classes I've taken thus far in my life. I took Endocrinology as an elective, note it was literally a medical school level course. My University(an Historically black college/University one of 100 in the U.S.) had an academic focus on Endocrinology(the study of glands and hormones) and the professor, I'll say her name Dr. Kelly Mack was and I'm 100% sure still is one of the most thorough teachers I've encountered and probably anybody would. None of the students stepping into that classroom on day 1 had ANY idea of what we were in for that semester. 

For an entire semester we were medical students, Dr. Mack's class by design demanded that's what we were, nothing less. The book for the course was a medical school level Endocrinology book and we had one homework assignment every couple weeks, that assignment was a mock diagnosis of a 'patient' that corresponded to what we were studying. Diagnosing patients is NOT easy! Especially as a college junior taking one course but that's what it was, she gave us sheet with vital signs and symptoms and basically said 'figure it out', no fanfare, no instructions, we just had to state it, not written up paper, the entire class had the same 'patient' there were about 20 of us in the class. I remember one time about 5-6 of us were in the library pouring over books and searching online to figure out a diagnosis(she didn't say we couldn't team up, just figure it out, get it right). Oh! On top of that we had 4 test that semester where we had 4 essay questions, each question had literally HAD to be a page, hand written where in detail we had to write out entire biological pathways for diseases and how they related to specific glands and hormones. Oh! It had to be 100% correct or the whole answer was wrong. The first test we took the highest grade was a 55!! 

She called in every student to discuss their test, I'm not sure if anybody dropped the course but it wasn't many. For some reason we all wanted to rise to her level. Also note, Dr. Mack is an alumnae of my alma mater so I definitely think that had something to do with her passion. Side note, when she called me in I got every pathway correct but mixed up the order, she asked me what happened!? I didn't want to tell her she was standing behind me the whole test and I was nervous AF. 


Thank you for reading because there is a point to this story, don't worry I'm gonna 'bring it all home'. As I've consistently looked for the best way for me to learn code, I had a turning point literally last week. I had an interview, I was prepared as I could be, it was literally 'let's set up a talk'. I had gotten info that the interviewers wanted to talk about a project, it was late and I did what I thought was best. I wasn't nervous going into the interview and we spent literally 20-25 minutes going over almost every angle of the project(it was an app). I found myself stuck at certain points. Like many of us, I found myself replaying the situation, I wasn't happy with where I was, I recognized growth but I felt as though I was being held to a very high standard in that interview(it was not for a mid level or higher position). I re-grouped and was like ok moving forward I need to be better! Then I was watching the documentary Lenox Hill on Netflix, yeah medical interest is forever ingrained in me but watching the show I saw a doctor explaining a disease pathway and thought about how it pertains to code, the detail needed, I thought about my experience with Endocrinology and the level of detail needed. 


When it has come to learning code, I have always fallen back on language, when thinking about how to create a feature I've found myself stuck, understanding what I want to do but literally thinking' I don't know the words aka code' on how to say it. So far in my code journey I've seen where there's a thought pattern that is seemingly required that honestly I don't have! I just don't, I've seen where math is less important and language takes over. I didn't study computer science, I wouldn't mind taking some courses after I get a job but I want to write code or work with it(tech support, other positions) and code is language, literally computer languages, writing instructions in a 'language'. Sure it's written largely by people with CS backgrounds but it's language based, it's not 1+3<=5+6 and that's all you're looking at, it's 'function{} this.state, if/else'. 

For everybody out here struggling as I am, take things from your past, all of what I've said have been challenges, we've all had to overcome challenge and work through it, if you struggled with English, it was a challenge, we are not robots and do not think the same. Every Medical Doctor did not study biology, Medical school is training, for all the hype about learning to code its training! A mechanic is trained, teachers are trained. If learning to code is a tremendous challenge pull from other challenges in your life, figure out how to make it make sense to you. 

I did not gravitate towards coding/programming as a life calling, I literally loved the life long learning aspect, 'something always new', something to learn, that's what made me want to do this, also for me I think it's the language aspect, the information. Whatever brought you on this path as well, lean on that but this is just like any job or career field on planet earth, it's an acquired skill and sure there are underline reasons why people choose what they do but again 'Code is Not magic' and even 'The worst witch' had to learn and became better.