A big part of succeeding at Dev Bootcamp is learning not how to code, but how to quickly teach yourself new things. During the first three phases, we would get a primer on a technology and then spend the rest of the day building something out of it. In the final phase we picked projects, figured out what technologies were needed, then researched and experimented until the app was built. This turned out to be fairly good preparation for editing a video for the first time.

A big part of what I want to do this year involves learning more about the mechanics of storytelling, and shooting and editing this project was an opportunity to learn a new approach to building narratives. Documenting my cohort’s journey through DBC as I was also going through DBC proved to be as much a drill in time management and stubbornness as storytelling, but those are useful skills as well.

The shooting was a blur, but the rest I remember in detail (I just finished the project a few hours ago). Editing is hard. It’s like making a story out of a sack of sentences. It’s exacting and technical and detail-oriented and it took me a very long time to do. In the absence of expertise, I felt my way through the project. I learned to use the internet, for it is all knowing. To get feedback early and often, because it’s easy to get stuck in your head with a project. To resist perfectionism, because that way lies stress and paralysis, neither of which are conducive to productivity. To trust in my own resourcefulness and know that I can learn what I need to learn no matter what.

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