One of the greatest things you can do when you start to build up a new skill or passion is to find a community that shares your interest. When finding that community it can give you a great opportunity to quickly expand your skills by leveraging the knowledge of your peers and mentors. It’s amazing to see the many people who are willing to help out someone who is just starting out. I’ve been incredibly grateful and surprised by the Ruby, Rails, and theFirehoseProject communities. It’s really why I believe that communities are one of the most important aspects of developing a new skill.
To really get the most of the community though you need to participate, you can’t just lurk and take. Giving back is incredibly important when moving along a positive path. I may not be the best coder, in fact I know I’m not, but I try and I work hard each day to improve my skills. Even though I’m not the best coder and I may not be able to contribute very much with in depth technical aspects I can contribute to the community with emotional intelligence.
Being a habitual beginner across many different disciplines I understand how difficult it can be to get started and sometimes all you need is words of encouragement. I usually do my best to give kind words of encouragement or good feedback to people who have started later than me or even people who are ahead of me but struggling. I was listening to a Thoughtbot podcast last week that featured Saron Yitbarek (codenewbie fame) and she had mentioned that when she was beginning out having someone give her compliments on her progress and pump her up to keep going was a massive boost to her learning experience and as she progressed she started to do that with other people eventually building a community of positivity, sharing, and forward movement learning. I thought about this and realized that the times in my life that I have progressed rapidly in my skills is when people were encouraging me and pumping me up to keep going. I think it’s why theFirehoseProject has been such a huge impact on my life and my development of my skills because that’s what everyone does; the founders, the mentors, junior mentor, alumni, and the students, we pump each other up and encourage each other to keep moving forward. That’s why I’ve taken approach of returning that encouragement and excitement to each new Firehoser that enters the program.
It’s amazing how a kind and encouraging word can motivate someone to keep going and keep learning. I’ve done my best to root myself firmly in the community, putting forth my best to give back and participate as much as possible. Communities will die if there is not participation. It’s amazing, the more you give back the more you receive. Taking the approach of participation and involvement has rewarded me with amazing peers, mentors, conversation, and belonging. When you find a community and you involve yourself in it it soon becomes family. Just like family, communities have the ability to raise us up and keep us moving forward. If you wonder why you aren’t getting much from a community or progressing as best you can with your skill, ask yourself whether or not you are participating in the community and giving back. It’s more important to give to your community than it is to take because ultimately you will receive more by giving than you ever would from taking. Be encouraging, be brave, be bold, be positive, and most importantly give back.