I’m starting a new project today, which is usually followed by spending an unreasonable amount of time thinking that I’m not good enough to be a developer, that I’m going to get fired, that it was fun while it lasted. Except for this time, I’m not going to let it. This time, I’m going to remember that:

Everyone has doubts when they learn something new;

• There’s a learning curve every single time you start a new project with new concepts you haven’t used before;
• It’ll get easier the more you push through;
• It’s okay to ask a lot of questions;
• It’s okay to not understand things for a while;
• It’s okay to not know;
• Things will click…eventually;
• You have done this before and you’ll do it again;
• You have access to plenty of resources;
• You are strong;
• You are smart;
• You love learning;
• You are a developer.

I’ve been in this cycle enough times now to know that learning something new comes with its challenges. And that’s a good thing because when you are challenged, you grow and learn more about yourself.

I recently had someone message me on social media to say that they were having a difficult time with a lab in their bootcamp. I’ve been there. It’s totally frustrating. You think the bootcamp should be giving you all the material you need to solve the problem, but they aren’t.

Here’s the thing: no one should be giving you all the resources you need to solve the problem. Why? Because as a developer, no one is going to give you all of the resources. You might have someone to lead you in the right direction, but a lot of your job is going to be finding out how to do the thing you need to do. And that’s 100% normal. The earlier you learn to read documentation and sort through StackOverflow and other resources, the easier you’ll find your bootcamp or job.

Coding isn’t easy for most of us. And that’s great. It gives you an opportunity to learn and grow and challenge yourself to be better than you were yesterday. And even though those challenges hurt, even though they push me to wonder if I am cut out for this, even though they stretch me as far as I can go, I’m thankful for them and committed to not feeling that imposter syndrome this time around.