Last Wednesday's Roller Coaster Dip

I Interrupt Every Few Seconds

I don't really know what is wrong with me, but apparently there are only two ways I can respond to someone trying to explain something to me: interrupt constantly and ask a bajillion questions, or zone out. Basically, if I'm not stopping you all the time to ask questions, I'm not really engaged. I don't have an in-between, which I guess I should try to work on. Some people don't mind me constantly interrupting, but one of our instructors just doesn't operate that way. I've heard several people say that her explanations are the best for their learning style. Some of her explanations have been really helpful for me too. But apparently it really bothers her when people interrupt her in the middle of a sentence, which I can understand. The problem is that she was not having a great day due to some back problems and I was having trouble understanding something with my coding partner (aka, I was interrupting a lot), and she really snapped. It seemed like she was at the end of her ropes and was holding back from punching me.

Everyone Hates Me and It's Humiliating

I really look up to this instructor and I value her opinion, so when she lost it at me, I took it very hard. I assumed it meant that all this time she had been hiding how much she couldn't stand me and now I had driven her to the point that she couldn't hide it anymore. So I started crying because I'm a kindergartener. Then I went into the bathroom and quietly sobbed for a long time. I was trying to pull myself together, but my thoughts were spiraling out of control. If she hates me, maybe all the other instructors also hate me. And maybe everyone in the class hates me too and just wishes I would shut up because I'm constantly being insubordinate. I thought, what is wrong with me? Why can't I just shut up and listen? I felt humiliated that all this time I had been constantly interrupting with questions and everyone was just cringing every time, wishing I would stop. And I could never tell anyone about this, not any of my classmates, not an instructor, not my family, because it was so humiliating. And I'd never be able to engage again, which meant that I wouldn't learn anything ever again. I know, I spiral quickly and dramatically.

Fun fact about me: once I start crying, it's really hard for me to pull myself together. I basically spent the rest of the day being a fragile soap bubble that could pop at any moment, and I was so distracted that I couldn't concentrate on anything. So when we did our afternoon lecture, I started crying again because I kept thinking about how much everyone probably hated me and how stupid and lame I had been for thinking that they actually liked me. As I sat there crying silently, Katie (classmate, savior) asked me what was wrong and I told her everything in a whisper. I told her I was totally not engaged anymore. I felt like I wouldn't be able to engage again because I'd be worried about people thinking that my interruptions are obnoxious. Katie was my rock. She talked me down from the ledge and became my programming partner. She kept me from losing it for the rest of the day. I don't know how she did it, but clearly she is amazing.

Maybe Not Everyone Hates Me

As I was walking to the BART from class, I forced myself to admit what had happened to the two classmates I was walking with. One of them had been there when the instructor got mad and she agreed that it had felt uncomfortably mean, but she also pointed out that the instructor was in a lot of pain and that she was probably just very cranky. The other classmate I was walking with said that she is really, really happy when I interrupt and ask questions because she always has the same question as I do. I started to think that some people might not hate me. This gave me a little more courage to speak to more people about it, and the more I talked about it, the better I felt. I still cried at home that night because I was a bit fragile and I needed to release my tension.

A New Hope

(If you don't know that the above subtitle is a reference to Star Wars, you will definitely think I am being extra dramatic). I woke up on Thursday feeling much better and one of my classmates looked like she was about to have a crying-on-the-bathroom-floor kind of day, so I swooped in and told her I could help. She wanted to be my partner again, even though we aren't supposed to repeat partners, and I agreed because I really wanted her to not feel like I had felt the day before. At one point we got a bit stuck on the exercises and I went to get an instructor for help. After the instructor helped us understand the exercise better, I told her what had happened the day before and she said that it was perfectly normal for every student to latch onto one particular instructor that they really meshed with and to not really mesh well with the other instructors. She also told us an awesome story about when she was in college taking programming classes and would cry in class at least once a week, and there was a super nice guy who would help her and she always felt so lame for crying in front of him. This made me feel a lot less lame for crying like a baby on the bathroom floor because I thought no one liked me.

By Friday morning I was laughing about the Wednesday version of myself. I'm so happy to be at Hackbright. It is so much safer here than at other hacker bootcamps. They only let people in who are smart and caring, which results in a wonderfully supportive group of people. I have been trying to reach out to my classmates as much as possible, especially when they seem like they are feeling stupid. I tell them that I think we are all really smart and that I dare them to try to prove me wrong. I'm sure my confidence will plummet again at a few points during this program and I will need these amazing women to help me out of my funk again.

Next Up....

Phew. That was a lot. Stay tuned for more about the Hackathon, my Tech Talk, creating games, and much, much more!