You Need a Teacher
and you become one if you have none
--
Learning is hard. Learning takes time and effort. Sometimes you wish you were not alone in this long journey. Sometimes you cannot find enough intrinsic motivation to push yourself on the way.
Learning psychology is a really interesting phenomenon. You may think that it’s an individual process but at the same time it’s really social.
Think schools and colleges. Think universities.
They all follow a similar teaching pattern and consist of four components:
- Learner
- Learning resources
- Learning Environment
- Teacher
Let’s briefly cover each of these components and their function to better understand the process:
1. Learner
Learner is the very core of the learning. Learning without learner is impossible. It’s the only component you cannot remove from the learning equation.
Learner is the potential.
2. Learning resources
Learner needs to learn something in order for the learning to happen.
That something could be standing out there clear: There could be textbooks, articles, papers on the topic learner trying to learn. There could be battle tested curriculums and learning materials.
However, having systematic resources is not always the case. Sometimes learner need to dig deeper, look at the places they never thought of or ask around to decode these resources and harvest knowledge out of them.
3. Learning Environment
Learning environment is another factor that has tremendous effect on learning.
Are you learning alone? Are you learning with a group? Is your learning environment distraction-free? Are you learning via an online lecture, a physical one? Are you sitting in your room learning with PJs or do you have formal attire?
So many factors in your learning environment can affect your learning.
4. Teacher
Teacher’s function in a learning environment is much more complex. From environment to environment teacher may:
- help decode the resources
- become the learning resource
- motivate the learner
- point out available resources
- develop a learning strategy
- coordinate the learning environment
Teacher has many jobs, and teacher is not always called a teacher. Sometimes we call them a professor, sometimes a tutor, sometimes a mentor.
Although teacher has a great function in the learning process, it’s not a must. Learners can learn themselves, too.
However, does that mean there is no teacher in the process?
I believe in the absence of a teacher, learner tries to become their own teacher. They motivate themselves, they develop strategies themselves, they decode resources without any external help.
When that happen, learner becomes the teacher and now learner has many jobs aside from learning.
So, when you don’t have a teacher, you become one.
📚 Self-study vs. Having a Mentor 👨🏫
If you are not happy with your pace in self-study, you might be doing too much things at once.
Because without a mentor you maybe trying hard to gather correct resources, creating a successful learning plan or you may get stuck time to time decoding what’s available as a resource.
If you cannot get into an academy / university to learn, you should consider finding a mentor.
Working with a good mentor will get much burden from your shoulders and will help you learn the topic you are trying to.
Where to Find a Mentor
Start looking for a mentor from your friends and family. Then you can look online.
https://mentorcruise.com/ is one of the many platforms where you can find professional mentors.
Or you can search Twitter for people who are offering mentorship.
When you get a paid mentorship service, it will be much more stable in terms of what you get.
Hire Me as a Mentor (20% off this January!)
I provide mentorship on starting a career in tech, software engineering and especially Android Development.
👉 Use this link to get monthly packages with 20% discount 👈
💬 What will you get?
📈 Weekly online career gatherings
🔥 Coaching and Q&A support via Slack
📝 Regular assignments and solutions via Slack
👥 Weekly 1:1 status update calls (up to 30 min)
💻 Detailed feedback on assignments and code-review of the projects
👨🏫 1:1 online classes on selected topics & mentorship sessions
🌵 Free access to the online courses and educational content published by Cactus.School
🔥 Coaching and Q&A Support via Slack
- I answer your questions on Android Development and Software Engineering in General.
- I point you to the available resources which suits best for your level.
- When you get confused on the topics you went over or when you have questions you can ask them via Slack and get written answers (usually within a day)
👨🏫 1:1 Online Classes & Mentorship Sessions
- You’ll have 8 or 12 sessions per month according to the selected package.
- You’ll pick the date and time on Calendly. (the timing of the sessions are really flexible)
- Each of the sessions are 45 minutes long.
- If you don’t show up on sessions or don’t book meetings they don’t get carried over to the next month.
- The sessions can cover questions & answers, any technical non-technical topic or live code-review according to your requests.
📈 Weekly online career gatherings
- There will be weekly online gatherings at times suitable for most of the attendees.
- In these video conferences we go over a selected topic voted and suitable for most of the attendees.
- The topics can be on Kotlin, Android Development, Software Engineering or any non-technical soft skill.
Example technical topics:
- What is clean code?
- How to do naming in software?
- How to debug programs?
- What is testing in software? How to write tests?
- SOLID principles
- Versioning systems
- …
Example Non-technical Topics:
- Freelancing
- Client communications
- How to prepare offers
- How to do technical estimation
- How to define an hourly wage
- How to create a succesful CV
- How to prepare for technical interviews
- How to bring a product idea into life
- How to create apps for Google Play Store
- …
👥 1:1 Status Update Calls
- We reflect on the mentorship process and try to improve it by defining strategies.
- We give feedback on each other and clear out any confusions.
- We evaluate general performance of each other.
- The 1:1s will be up to 30 mins per week and the timings can be adjusted according to general attendance of mentees.
