It was frustrating at first learning it (all the compile errors), but after trial and error, and much help from the react docs, I eventually got the hang of basic functions and structures. I can definitely say that building this site was so much easier than my past projects. Those were pure HTML pages and I would have to keep track of multiple pages. This however was just a single page application; react router was incredibly helpful for simulating a multiple page application. Components made this project so much more efficient and clean than my old tactic of copy/pasting entire HTML chunks to duplicate an element.
I'd like to thank the creators of these plugins; they definitely helped this portfolio look more awesome!