Hey team!
How is everyone feeling so far? I honestly feel so stressed as this is getting super hard for me to follow and I’m feeling like I’m falling behind! I knew it was going to be hard but I wasn’t expecting this level of stress lol! Anyone else feeling similar to me? Any advice to keep my head in the game so I can finish the rest of this bootcamp?
Maybe try taking one lesson at a time that usually helps
Hi Angelica, first thing I want to say is: take a deep breath! Learning something new should bring excitement, something to look forward too. Maybe some hesitation as in ‘is this for me? can I do it?’ but you should not feel stressed about it. Learning something new takes time and it becomes easier over time! Trust the process!
I am so sorry you feel stressed out and I think you should take time to step back a bit. Remember this is a ‘self-paced’ course. Even if you fall behind during the bootcamp, the course materials, the forum, discord and all the recorded streams will still be there! You can take it slow and go through it at a pace that is good for you.
We are only at the second week, and currently in a 4 day break before the next class. Review the things you struggle with, look on MDN to see examples of the HTML tags and how they are used. Use discord and the forums to ask for help and explanations when you get stuck. We are all learning and can help each other to overcome these hurdles.
Lastly, and I whisper this with some years of development already under my belt… even experienced people feel overwhelmed sometimes with all the developments in IT. And we use tools to get things done faster. Would you believe I had to look up how to do a DOCTYPE declaration? I just do html:5 in my editor and it poops out a whole HTML page construction. I never even look at the nitty gritty anymore. But I do know what it is, what it is for and recognize it’s use. That is what experience does.
Hang in there! Take that deep breath and review the things that you struggle with. Step in discord and say hello - we’ll be there!
Syl
Hi Angelica,
I agree wholeheartedly with @syllie. Remember, you’re taking on a lot within 6 weeks, and we’re all coming in at different stages of our learning journey. If it were a one-stop deal, we’d understand a concept immediately. But this requires patience, practise, and kindness to oneself.
Take it from someone who’s been at this for over ten years: Not knowing is a part of learning. After some time, we begin recognising patterns from the past, and can apply those as we go. Knowing you can look things up and, more importantly, ask for help is critical.
One thing we really try to emphasise with these bootcamps is that the learning can be a collaborative process. There are over 7000 of y’all signed up to this bootcamp, all understanding different parts better. I highly recommend taking a shot at answering questions when you can. Why? Because explaining something forces you to try and put those thoughts into words, and articulating those inevitably leads you to understanding them better.
Finally, as @syllie said, don’t forget that this is self paced. This means:
Syl and Ramón advices, they are great. Don’t worry much about time or if others are going faster, focus on your process. If others can do it, YOU CAN DO IT.
When you feel tired, just take a break, do something easy: I use to wash my dishes or clean, walk, listen my favourite songs, etc. during my breaks. If you got tired just stop for the day.
The most important thing is be grit about your goal and keep learning a tiny bit everyday.
Consult the things you learn in MDN (you even can follow their path to become Front End Web Developer too https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Front-end_web_developer, start slow, give yourself time) or W3Schools. Do test, play and break things every lesson. I console.log() a lot. Try to practice the things you learn.
You could make your own study group or try to find a study buddy; sometimes we only need to speak with someone about it to get a solution or dont feel isolated. Just keep going.
Dont lose encourage, you can do it, remember the Esopo’s fabule about the turtle and the hare. ;D
YOU ARE NOT ALONE, there are many great people here and in freeCodeCamp forum.
Hey!
It might be the exercises that give you the impression, that you can’t remember anything - with each step you have to do something new or repeat one of the previous steps, and the really clear instructions are really tempting to just jump to the instruction and not reading or thinking deeply about what to learn in that particular exercise. And not to experiment during the exercises!
So of course it’s difficult if you try to remember what you already did before 
Even if you try to be attentive all the time, the exercises only tell you what to do now and at the end there is a nice project - when you make a website on your own there is nobody who tells you: “Now make a div and put this and that inside.” That’s when the real learning starts!
But while the order of the curriculum makes sense and each single step repeats something or introduces gently something new, it is not necessarily the right order for you to do it!
If you have a project in mind that you want to built, please do so! If you want a simple website with some text on it, start doing it directly - you should already know enough tags to structure it (h1, h2, p etc, even a form was in the cat photo app I think). If there are some parts still missing let them be missing, it’s okay, you can come back later or ask / search for it. Chances are high somebody else had the same problem before you and asked that question in one of the multiple websites for these kind of things 
If you don’t have an own goal, you could even take the certification projects!
First start making the html without CSS, the User stories / instructions are quite simple (that means not that you are bad if you don’t know everything without looking it up, only that the instructions are really detailed!), then you can repeat the CSS parts of the curriculum and when doing the exercises apply what you’ve done in that exercise to your certification project, so that you not only follow the instructions without thinking, but also repeat it on your own.
And do not take too much time on thinking about the text that survey or that tribute page should have, copy the text of the example or put some random things together, you currently want to practice html and CSS and not texting!
Hey Angelica! I’m sorry to hear you feel that way. So first of all, please, don’t feel discouraged! You’re probably doing just fine, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
If you’ve never done much of coding before, this is bound to feel overwhelming at times. And that’s totally okay. It does not suggest any kind of “failure” to perform or whatever. You’re not “falling behind” either.
This is usually a self-paced course, so having the live-streams might make it feel more stressful, but at the end of the day, the videos are available for you to watch whenever. I recently saw that people who were in the last cohort were just now finishing their certifications. So there is absolutely no rush.
You got this!
Hi @angelicaevans2960116 , just sending some sympathy in your direction! I am not majorly stressed but I am definitely behind, and this occasionally causes me a bit of “urrrgh!!!” and I have to choose between different priorities that are big in my life right now. The actual coding I find ok (I did a little bit of an introductory course before on Udemy, which gives me some valuable context - otherwise I’m a total beginner). What I’m more “urrrgh!” about is:
a) keeping up with the schedule;
b) my current confusion about where our cohort communicates and how many conversations are going on that I don’t even see (classcentral.com? discord? different channels, topics?) - I just don’t have an overview at the moment and that gives me a feeling of FOMO!
and
c) I have nooooo clue about github and other ways of showing my work, no clue at all, and I don’t have time to research it at the moment…and I’ve a nagging feeling that I’m falling behind if I don’t start doing that kind of thing? But I’ve a feeling that’s not the case, it’s just that some folks are able and enthusiastic to do that right now, and it’s ok that I’m not 
So yes, I am a bit stressed : )
I have no advice other than what I’m telling myself - that learning slowly is totally fine, that not knowing what’s going on is also fine. Basically to quote Jess Rose, “everything’s fine” 
Very best of luck : )
There are thousands of students, all going at different paces. Do not be too hard on yourself. It is obviously a lot of materials to process in a very short period of time. Remain confident that you will get there with patience, consistency and a little bit of grit.
Good luck 
Been there so I feel your pain!
I actually started the now legacy cert as I have two young children and an elderly father, so I don’t have much time. I was literally three tasks away from finishing!
So I’ve persevered with the new cert and some things are beginning to fall into place - end goal my website and the cert!
But I did get very discouraged - just keep going and thinking of the end goal, I find the more I practice and the more steps I repeat the more I understand. Good luck!
Hey Clara - good to see you back! I am also happy that you mention that things now are falling into place! Things do get easier over time! Great to see you are closing in on your end goal! You got this!
Hello Angelica,
All the great folks here have shared their thought. let me share a little bit of my bread 
and peanut:peanuts: butter. if you are reading this or anyone feeling the same as you. I want to say. You’ve got this.
A journey of a thousand mile start with a single step. You have done the hardest of part by starting this bootcamp and here is the other part: You’re not alone. Lean on on over seven thousands folks that are here and lean on the teachers. Class central has provided a great opportunity platform to interact, use it well. My guess, you feel over overwhelmed because you want get everything all at once. like some folks said, maybe try one lesson at a time.
My other peanut 
is to stay in the game and never quit. You’ve got this! if you need to hear it from your love ones, tell them to tell you that “Angelica, you’ve got this”.
This is a self-pace bootcamp, go with your pace. All the materials are here, use it well. See you at the top!
I am just copy pasting what I asked on Discord as @syllie said:
Hey guys!! just a quick doubt here, and I’m interested on how do you approach this… I feel like I understand all the syntax and examples but when it comes to applying it in a logical way, I get lost on it, everything turns into a maze of concepts and possibilities. Is there any process or way to focus and get over this feeling that you can share? thanks alot!!!
Hello Zensir,
Don’t beat your self on that, I also felt this way as well, but I think you need to practice over and over again until your hands teaches your muscle memory to understand it and apply it logically. however, you can always ask questions in the forum or here. I guess that’s why they created it for interaction and getting more understanding.
Thank you for your response. I took a break to really calm down and compose myself. I think I took a little bit of a longer break but I’m ready to get back into the action and just tell myself that I can do it. I’m very thankful for these videos as a reminder that everything is here and on my time.
Thanks for responding. I took a break and ready to dive back into the bootcamp. Thanks for the advice and reminder that this is self paced and videos will stay up.
Hello everyone! Thanks for all the encouraging words and advice. I took a break because I just didn’t feel confident in what I’m doing but ready to dive back in and finish this bootcamp! If anyone else feels what I felt we can do this and we have a wonderful community to lean on! We got this
Thank you to all the folks who posted encouragement here! And thank you @angelicaevans2960116 for sharing your feelings, because I’ve been feeling similarly over the last few days too. But I’m so glad to see that you’re feeling ready for it again! We can do this 
It feels kinda bad not being able to keep pace with the live streams, but I just gotta keep reminding myself that there’s no “late penalty” here and that it’s okay to go at our own pace.
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