Reflections on my time at RC

What a joy

This past winter, I completed a self-directed, community-focused programming retreat at the Recurse Center in Brooklyn, New York. I invested 12 weeks into programming at the edge of my abilities in a community of motivated peers.

There’s main two things that I’m walking away with:

1) renewed excitement of building my own projects, and

2) the joy of doing so in community.

For me, these two things are deeply intertwined: I’m much more eager to build things now that I have a community of kind programmers to brainstorm with, celebrate with, seek help from, and generally just feel connected with. I’ve gotten exposed to so many cool things I would never have heard of before, which gives me ideas and inspiration for what I’d like to build next.

What’s more is that now that I’ve gotten to know programmers and makers of all different backgrounds and experience levels, I feel more secure in myself; I’ve never been one of those people (usually portrayed in society as cis white men) who have been tinkering and obsessed with computers since they were 8 years old, and I don’t have to be.

In the past, programming has felt so serious – I’ve ascribed so much importance to it in my mind, like it’s a calling meant only for the chosen ones, something that only smart people can do well and are interested in – and I’m afraid to find any way that “I can’t do it” (i.e. it doesn’t come as easily to me and I struggle more than others) because that’ll be proof that I’m fundamentally not good enough and will always be an outsider. But now, being part of the RC community has really helped me see that there’s nothing innately special about good programmers and that there are as many different ways of being a good programmer as there are ways of being a person in the world.

There are many people (at RC and otherwise) who know much more than I do about programming (just a fact, given that I am a wee young unexceptional new grad). Even so, I found that it’s not uncommon to stumble upon something they don’t know that I can help them with. My knowledge is not simply a subset of theirs and I have much more to offer than I’d thought.

Furthermore, regarding my value as a person, what do I care if someone is “better” at programming than I am? It’s like if someone is “better” than me at weightlifting, cooking, crocheting, language-learning – cool, great, neat; we’re all on our own journeys that are complex beyond comparison. Programming is literally just another hobby or just another profession. When it comes to any programming thing, I could learn it if I wanted to (just like any other thing) – and if I don’t want to (i.e. if I’m not interested in it), then that’s just fine because what I do know and what I am interested in is cool.

What I did at RC

What I’ll do differently next time

Looking back, I realize that I put a lot of pressure on myself to “make the most” of my time at RC. But being fresh out of college and not yet having the experience of working at a full-time job, I think I just didn’t know what I was looking for. I did reach out to people to have coffee chats and pair program, tackle projects that pushed my comfort zone, and self-manage my days.

But it wasn’t until my second-to-last day of batch that I truly came to experience the magic of RC. Specifically, it was when I paired with Karen on setting up a homelab on my Ubuntu MacBookPro so that I could self-host my apps. It was a daunting task that turned out to be not so scary as I worked through it with her, and until that moment, I don’t think I realized how much I wanted to explore self-hosting, servers, and deployment and how afraid of it I’d been. In those few hours, I felt like it clicked for me; I was truly “working at the edge of my abilities,” “learning generously,” and “building my volitional muscles” (the three RC self-directives).

I wish I’d had more moments like these during my batch. Maybe if I’d pushed myself harder, I could’ve figured it out earlier on, but that winter was a challenging time in my life and I had been working at max capacity for many months prior. I felt like I needed to let myself just breathe and take it easy; I remember stepping back and asking myself “Am I happy?” and saying “Yes, I’m happy” and then “Ok, great!” and moving on because that was enough.

That said, during my next batch, here’s what I want to do differently:

What I wanna build next

(I’m excited that I actually have these, please reach out if you’d like to pair with me on any!)

Never graduate

I’ve written up this document as a reflection on my time in batch at RC, but my time at RC is far from over. Something we say about alums at RC is that we “never graduate,” meaning that even though our time in batch has ended, we’re still learning and growing as part of the community. I’m active on Zulip, sharing what I’ve been working on and reading about what others are up to, and I pop in to virtual events every so often. It makes me so happy to keep in touch with fellow batchmates and to see new Recursers going through this amazing experience.

Here’s to never graduating!