All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation. — Max McKeown
It’s been a challenging, fun filled bootcamp and I’ve been able to not only learn a lot but also mingled with a lot of developers who are more experienced than I am, seen things their way and also been able to pick their brains.
During course of the bootcamp, we’ve been constantly introduced to new technologies, new and better ways of doing things. We are expected to put this new knowledge into practice almost immediately. While it has not be easy, as expected, it has been fun and it has also help me grow my adaptability skill.
What is adaptability?
Adaptability refers to how you, as a person is able to adjust to new conditions. Change is inevitable, how you react when a change occurs. Are you the type that accepts and learns to live with the change or you’re the type that sucks and blames either yourself or others for the change. I think adaptability helps you see changes in a new light, in a positive way and how best you can take advantage of that change. Adaptability helps you fight for survival no matter the condition you find yourself in. Just like how chameleons change their color to fit in to their environment, we need to be flexible and
The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability. — Charles Darwin
How Adaptability Helped me Survive Andela’s Bootcamp
The first challenge I faced during the bootcamp was making sure to follow the TDD (Test Driven Development) way of writing software. Now, I’ve always heard about TDD before and after a first try, I resolved that it might not be for me, also every software developer I know don’t do TDD, which also made me resolve it might just be another software development buzzword. On receiving the bootcamp’s second challenge, I realized we had to do TDD.
At this stage, the former me would’ve resolved it wasn’t something I needed to do, but it’s something I needed to learn and start making use of, once and for all. I decided to face the challenge head on and now, even though my TDD game is not strong yet, I’ve been able to adapt to writing TDD code.
Same thing with other challenges at the bootcamp. These challenges were developed to stretch a candidate and take them out of their comfort zone and I commend Andela because the challenges do exactly what they were meant to. A lot of people, myself inclusive, struggle through them and have to adapt to a lot of new concepts, ideas and ways of doing things.
Been open to change, seeing opportunities (to learn the world class way of building software) where other people see failure or impossibilities, not complaining or blaming, been curious, seeking to learn more, having an open mind and knowing what I’m here for are skills that have helped me adapt well during the course of this bootcamp.
Nobody likes to change. There will always be resistance to change, and there always will be change. And the quicker you get to that, the easier it is. It’s not such a difficult thing. If you entrench yourself and go, ‘By God, I will not change, I will not have this.’ Then, you’re a dead man. We’re great at adaptability. It’s our strongest suit. — Nick Nolte
