I'm really scared of not knowing.
I want to see all the steps ahead of me before I take a single step forward.
How funny it is — I didn’t think twice when I moved to America.
I didn’t overthink. I was sure about my choice. I just applied for a job, got it, and got on the plane.
Three years later, here I am, sitting in front of my computer with a “scary” coding problem.
I’m completely frozen and can’t take another step. I literally panic.
Intimidating Big Unknown
I hate the phrase “take it step by step.” Because I don’t even know what the steps are! That drives me crazy.
I don’t need to know how we’ll get there right now — I can figure that part out.
But I definitely need to know what the exact steps are before I start.
That’s usually where I get stuck and start panicking.
When I ask MR.C — ChatGPT or sometimes Cursor, the nickname my peer SWE student and I gave them — “What are the exact steps to make A happen?”, it will give me the steps. But I can’t even wrap my head around why those steps are in that order.
I’m at the very beginning of my programming journey, so to me, those steps often make absolutely no sense.
Into the Unknown
Once you realize you don’t need to know all the steps before starting, you can just step into the unknown.
When I moved to New York, I didn’t know anything. I just applied for a job and got a one-year contract.
“What happens after a year? What should I do?” — that could be parked for later, because first I needed to figure out where to stay.
I found it extremely helpful to worry about just one thing. Once other worries come in, I’m done.
But I was so sure of what I wanted. I wanted to get out of Seoul and live abroad. I wanted to end the long-distance relationship and finally live in the same city as my then-boyfriend, now husband.
I just needed to know what I wanted, very clearly. Then I could take the immediate next step and deal with the rest as I went.
Falling Boxes
For our group project this week, I wanted to make a homepage with an animation of falling package boxes (maybe 10 or so) that bounce at the bottom.
You can imagine me sweating in front of my computer. I had no idea where to start.
Then I thought, “Oh, maybe let’s just get one box to fall first.”
Then we can add the bounce at the bottom.
Once I made a single box fall, I was so excited.
But I quickly realized I needed to figure out the viewport height. Otherwise, I’d have to hardcode it, and it would only work on my laptop, not on a bigger dual monitor.
So I had to figure out how to measure the viewport height, and so on.
Probably this must be one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my life, period.
I know I’ll definitely forget this lesson as soon as panic comes in, but I’m writing it here so I can revisit it.