Becoming “The Resource Guy” — My 6 Week Self Reflection of GA’s UXDI

Alright, so after being in General Assembly’s User Experience Design Immersive, I think I solidified myself as “the resource guy.” So what does that mean? Well, in the resource channel of my cohort, I probably post almost every day one webinar, article, or social media post that I found that could help my fellow cohort mates as we continue our journey into UX design.

I don’t think I would’ve ever done something like this in past groups/programs that I was a part of. I would always hog the juicy information that I found on the Internet and I would never share it with anyone, not even my closest friends cause I always wanted the competitive edge. But things have drastically changed for me. Instead of being that snob of a player, I am now always being a team player, providing not only my cohort resources that I find interesting but also other communities that I’m a part of.

And that’s the key word right there: commmunity. It’s something that I learned when I first started dancing competitively in my first year of Rutgers. There are so many communities out there, and the UX design community has to be one of the nicest ones out there. Everyone is out here trying to support one another, and it’s because for a major of people in the industry, they’ve been in our shoes.

I recently connected with one of my cohort mates who pulled me to the side to ask “how I do it all?” For context, she’s referring to how do I spend almost 12 hours a day just immersing myself into UX design, and to answer that I made this very (emphasis on very) crude Venn diagram of “how I do it all.”

Now I want you to pay attention to the bottom right circle where it says “Support/Community.” I don’t know about you guys, but there right there is one of the reasons how I’m able to continuously push myself to keep engulfing content. It’s part passion, part mindset, and part support/community. I won’t go crazy into the specifics but community is SO important, it might even be the most important (but that’s up for debate).

What I’m trying to say is without the support of my cohort, my instructors, and my loved ones, I wouldn’t be where I am today. If my cohort hated that I would drop all those resources in the slack channel, I would’ve stopped. It would change the way I am and prevent me from reaching my potential. But it’s the opposite of that. Instead, they embrace it, telling me to never stop and to keep dropping those resources even if it’s a meme about UX. They support me, and it’s a two way street for me.

So if you’re struggling to get past something, always look back at your community. As a wise man once said, you can go faster going solo, but you’ll go further as a team. And that’s what I learned halfway through my program, that community is invaluable and the support that is created between us will always be there.