I feel like I am failing my coding journey and education
Hey everyone,
I’m having a pretty hard time with my studies right now and I would like some advice.
I’ll try to explain my situation a bit with a small timeline:
In 2021 I finished secondary school in Computer Science where I mostly worked with C#.
In 2022 I started a bachelor in Computer Science. There I learned Java and even made a pretty big project (a game with a UI based on Splendor). That actually went really well and I felt like I understood what I was doing.
In 2023 things went wrong. I had some personal/health issues and barely attended school that year.
In 2024 I decided the bachelor felt too theoretical and switched to a graduate degree in system and network administration. Honestly, I regret that choice. I had no motivation for it at all and basically lost a year.
Now I’m back in a graduate programming course in C#, which is what I originally wanted. I was really motivated at the start. Because I still had credits from before, I could skip some courses.
But that’s also part of the problem. I kind of got dropped back into a level similar to where I left off in 2022, except now I don't feel like I know what I'm doing partly because I haven’t used C# in a long time.
Right now I have an exam assignment where I need to:
connect to an external Active Directory.
build a TreeView in WPF with OUs, groups and users
implement CRUD operations.
On paper it doesn’t sound impossible, but I’m completely stuck when I actually try to code it. So much so that I'm just staring at my screen.
Personally I think it's mostly because of the following:
I’m out of practice with programming.
C# isn’t fresh anymore and I’ve never really worked with WPF before.
Trying to start coding feels very overwhelming for this reason.
My steps in trying to get back into it so far are:
I tried following the book "C# Player’s Guide", but I’m only at 120 pages in and it feels slow.
At this point I’m pretty stressed. I’m 23 and it feels like I’ve wasted a lot of time already, and I still don’t feel like a fully have the basics.
I also have ADHD and ASS, which makes it harder to stay focused and consistent, even when I want to.
I feel like I should definitely be able to do this but I just can't get to the point of actually succeeding and it's driving my crazy...
So I guess I’m asking: How would you approach getting back into programming after a gap like this?
Should I focus more on theory or just start building things again?
Any tips for WPF + Active Directory specifically?
And how do you deal with feeling behind?
Any advice would really help. Thanks.