Justin Stambaugh

Calm and Collective wins the race

March 26th, 2010

Anger from frustration or failure can have a negative effect on your performance. For the last few months I have been learning the basics of JavaScript and Ajax and with no surprise my scripts did not work the first time and sometimes the second. Now, I could of taking my textbook throw it across the room and punched my monitor in the jugular, never to return to it again. Well that is a little extreme, but what I’m trying to say is you shouldn’t be baffled when your scripts fail on the first attempt.

I have found that persistence and consistency are key to not losing it when I code—especially JavaScript. Every spelling error, every wrong punctuation, capitalization error can cause a script to become predictably nonfunctional. Don’t let this upset you, review your code, adjust, and try again. Trust me your monitor will thank you later.

To conclude, at first learning any new language, don’t let the frustration get the best of you because it’s not going to be magic when you first begin. It takes time and practice to become a professional; even then you’ll still have mistakes. Kids, you may think your only choices are to swallow your anger or throw it in someone’s face, but there’s a third option: You can just let it go, and only when you do that is it really gone and you can move forward.