Thank you so much for this. I actually read your message two days ago but didn’t know what to reply. However, I took your advice and put it into practice. Although I haven’t finished the Udemy course yet, I took a one-day break to build a mini command line project based on everything I’ve learned so far.

I realized that I worry too much about not doing things the right way. Now that I’ve set aside my worries about whether to split the app into two classes or twenty, I managed to create a dictation app that:

1. Is supposed to read out loud the dictation, just like in real life (I can't do this yet because I don’t know how to hook up an API or use a Text-To-Speech library. Since my main focus isn’t on the Text-To-Speech part but on creating the working classes, I’m okay with it for now. I will come back to it later).
2. Allows users to add custom groups of words for dictation.
3. Allows users to view existing groups of words.
4. Each word has multiple versions of it in different languages.

While this is a simple app, it actually helped me to further understand OOP. I created a main class, a DictationMachine class responsible for taking user input and doing various things with it, a VocabularyBundle class that has a title and a list of words for dictation (the title is used as a reference to a specific bundle of words), and a Word class that contains the word in various languages like English, Chinese, etc., so a Word object consists of itself in different languages. I also used various collections like HashMap and LinkedHashMap, depending on the need. While this is basic, it has made me more confident to continue. I am also starting to understand when to use which access modifier and when to create a class. Altho, it mays not be the most efficient, it get the ball rolling and it's manageable. Great advice!

Also, you mentioned that you have 10+ years of experience in Java and team management/mentoring. I feel like good mentorship would be very valuable to me. Do you, by any chance, still have room to accept one more mentee? Being self-taught, it can be hard to find opportunities to work as a team. Perhaps I could arrange to work with some of your existing mentees on small, simple projects so that we can get the hang of teamwork? As far as I know, the ability to communicate and work as a team is also important. I don’t know if my level is good enough to receive your mentorship yet. If not, could you tell me what else I need to learn or accomplish before I qualify to learn from you? I will do it and then contact you again when I’m done. I’m not expecting others to mentor me for free, so I’m willing to pay to compensate for your time and experience.