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Welcome > Student Expectations

Learning to Learn

The primary skill you gain at Nashville Software School is not a mastery of writing code. Far from it. You will spend six months learning the very basics of it. The largest benefit of coming to Nashville Software School is to learn how to think like a software developer, and learn like a software developer.

If you can do those two things with eagerness and proficiency, the world is yours for the taking.

We coach you down that path, and it’s a hard one. Your mind will be challenged like never before, and your brain will be completely rewired by the end of your six months.

Being a Beginner

You may be coming from another career in which you gained a certain level of expertise. You may have had the respect of colleagues for your knowledge and skill. If this describes you, then you must work on letting all of that go and adopting shoshin or Beginner’s Mind. This is very hard for some people to do as we are taught by the traditional education, and many corporate, environments that admitting ignorance is bad.

It is crucial to success at an accelerated bootcamp like Nashville Software School. Admitting that you are at the limit of your knowledge and seeking help from your fellow classmates, and from the instruction team is the only way to make it through the program successfully.

You will struggle with this, and the team here will help guide you along your journey. It is critical to work on changing your mindset to always be a beginner because you are on your first step towards entering a field where your must always be learning.

It is impossible to know all the things. If you can’t admit to your colleagues, and yourself, that you don’t know something, and open yourself to learning, you won’t be successful in the field.

Making as Many Mistakes as Possible

This is going to be one of the hardest adjustments for you to make, and it will take some time before you believe your instructors.

We desperately want you to fail at things.

We want you to try your hardest, and push the limits of your knowledge, and then fail miserably. It is only through failing at something, and then being guided through the solution that the human brain truly learns.

Much like Yoda said to Luke Skywalker

“If you end your training now — if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did — you will become an agent of evil.”

You will be presented with large challenges as we guide you through rewiring your brain to think like a software developer. You will be heavily tempted to withdraw from the challenge and give in to your ego. It is the student that attacks challenges in the face of that adversity that gets the most out of the course.

Asking Questions

If you adopt the beginner’s mind, then you will see the power of asking questions. Curiosity is squashed out of us by the traditional education environment, and your time at NSS will be your opportunity to re-ignite that passion for knowledge that we are all born with.

In the years we have been coaching students through this program, the ones who struggle the most, or don’t make it at all are the ones who have an internal dialogue of “I need to do this myself. I just need to work harder.” or “I don’t need help from anyone. I should know this.”

If you fall into that trap, you will not get what you need from this opportunity.