I had the amazing opportunity to intern for an AP (Advanced Placement) Computer Science class in high school, more specifically AP Computer Science Principles. I was a senior during that time, taking that same class last year and thought it would be a great opportunity to help other students start their journeys in Computer Science.
For those interested, the class covered basic HTML, CSS, and JS topics for the first semester, then during the second semester the class shifted gears into teaching Python, later using some APIs during the final weeks. Such as the Twitter API.
The most important takeaway from my internship experience was that:
It is ok to say "I don't know"
During the first semester I would get flustered and try to make up some shoddy solution if I didn't know the answer to one of the students' questions. I would feel embarrassed because I thought I should have known the answer to all their questions, and somehow be some kind of Computer Science God, whereas this was just not the case.
I learned how to be comfortable with not knowing something, and instead of saying,
"Uhh, yea the mainframe is just broken I guess, have you tried restarting your computer?"
I'm more comfortable saying,
"Hey, I don't know. Let's debug it together and find out why."
That way, I was way more relatable to the students, they wouldn't be afraid to ask me questions, and at the end of the day I ended up learning alongside them.
Happy Hacking!
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