When I started my first job programming job out of university, I spent a lot of time pairing with one of my teammates (online) at the beginning. Not necessarily because it was enforced, but I think we figured it would just be a good way to learn. This went on for a few months, over time I'd take shots at doing tasks for myself, some with more or less success.
Then eventually that teammate moved to a different team, and suddenly I was doing a lot more stuff on my own and... I learned WAY faster. I suddenly realized how dependant I was being when we were pairing all the time. Call it a self-discipline issue maybe, but if I ran into a roadblock I'd just ask him for the solution cause otherwise it felt like I was wasting time to not figure things out for myself. But once that crutch wasn't there, I had to think about things for myself more, and it was like a couple week before I was feeling way more confident in my skillset.
Then eventually that teammate moved to a different team, and suddenly I was doing a lot more stuff on my own and... I learned WAY faster. I suddenly realized how dependant I was being when we were pairing all the time. Call it a self-discipline issue maybe, but if I ran into a roadblock I'd just ask him for the solution cause otherwise it felt like I was wasting time to not figure things out for myself. But once that crutch wasn't there, I had to think about things for myself more, and it was like a couple week before I was feeling way more confident in my skillset.