touch draft.md

It feels weird to start a blog again in 2023. I’ve tried and failed at that several times out of fear of how I’ll be received. This fear stems from a self-critical voice I’ve carried for a long time, which I’m now determined to overcome. I’d hate for the people close to me and those that I admire to refrain from sharing their thoughts - I’d miss out on so much! So I’ve decided that I won’t tolerate that voice for myself any longer.

A few things catalyzed this:

• A relationship that’s inspired me to better attend to my own growth.
• A desire to exist online a bit more than I have over the last decade.
• A career change! I’m leaving the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) after four and a half years. I’m grateful for the time I’ve spent supporting the organization and growing with my team, and I’d love to write about it soon.
• I’m finally going to the Recurse Center in late March! This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I want a place to share what I’m working on.

What is the Recurse Center?

Recurse is a self-directed learning retreat for programmers. It’s free, because Recurse-the-company makes money by providing recruiting opportunities. You spend 12 (or 6) weeks with other learners focusing on getting a lot better at programming. This can mean so many different things, and people approach it different ways. So, this post is going to focus on what I want out of it, as I’d like to look back and reflect on how things actually go afterward.

Why I’ve wanted to go to Recurse

I’ll write more about this some other time, but in short: I spent 5-6 years in Mississippi for undergrad, work, and a stab or two at grad school. As a math student, I struggled to find mentors for the areas that interested me. Learning programming was also tough, as the CS department was rather strict about prerequisites. In later work and graduate study, I was somewhat starved for technical leadership. I was often pointed at problems and left to figure out the best solutions from scratch.

This made me more independent as a learner, but by no means is it something I’m fond of. I’m actually a very social learner! It’s so important to me to have the opportunity to talk through problems I’m figuring out, hear other people’s take on them, get feedback from folks with more experience, etc. So I treasure opportunities for sharing, mentorship, and collaboration.

I found out about Recurse sometime in 2015 or 2016 when I discovered Julia Evans’s blog. She wrote about her time there in 2013 (and again in 2020). Her blog had a huge impact on my perspectives on learning and inspired my own (private) writing practice.

After returning to the Bay Area, I started meeting more and more people who have attended Recurse. They’ve been great to work with, and they all reported great experiences with the program. They also provided the encouragement I needed to break the inertia keeping me in my current role. I’m so grateful for these connections, and I can’t wait to make more.

What I’m hoping to accomplish at a glance

I have a few overarching goals:

• Focus on math and mathematical programming. I’ve been prepping for this over the last few months.
• Brush up on my programming skills in general! It’s been a minute since I got to focus on software projects, so there are plenty of fun things to play with!
  • Some applications of interest include networking, backend dev, spatial (GIS) programming, and learning a bit of front-end.
• Write about as much as I can.

This list was longer and much more specific when I first drafted it back in January. Two months of studying alone later, I’ve decided to prioritize collaboration over specific projects.

Writing is nonetheless important to me because I want to get more comfortable putting myself out there. I’m quite reserved online when it comes to posting things as myself. I usually hang out in hobby-related forums or spend time in community chats that I’m most comfortable in. I’d like to push myself a bit in this regard.

Anyway, my batch starts on March 27th, so I’ll see how it all goes!