When I first started Hackbright, I thought regular blogs--even just weekly ones--would be easy. Boy was I wrong! There's been so much material being injected in our minds every day that it takes me so much willpower just to stay awake past 10 or 11pm (in comparison to when I used to go bed past 1am easily with longer work hours). But anyway, here are the highlights of last week:
Monday
I think I could speak for almost everyone in our cohort when I say that it was refreshing to be able to take a break from all the hard Python classes and material and transition into something we were more or less pretty familiar and/or comfortable with: HTML & CSS.
There's been quite a good amount of changes I've noticed in HTML5 and CSS (3?) since I last really, truly wrote HTML & CSS (and reviewing the languages on Codecademy don't count) so I was happy to have gotten a refresher.
Tuesday
We learned Flask! I had seen a Flask demo before at a PyLadies study group way back when and have always wondered more on its features and functionality. It was really satisfying to finally get the "Aha!" moment of how all the scripts and programs we've been writing in Python can be "applied" or translated into an accessible format on websites, web apps, etc. For the longest time I've been confused as to where the connection between Python and the web lies, as I feel like I've been coding Python in an isolated environment that's only executed in the typical Terminal console.
In the morning we also had a great Career Coffee session with Wendy from Career Services. I've gotta say it was one of the most hilarious moments (IMO) when she was addressing the 3-6 month average time it takes a post-Hackbright grad to land a job, and said something along the lines of "Some of you may decide to take a month long vacation after this program, are currently pregnant, or will find out you're pregnant and decide to take some time off for yourselves..." I could literally feel the oxygen drain from the room as everyone gasped and could not contain the laughter. I think I can say for sure that getting pregnant is the last thing on everyone's minds right now.
Wednesday
Big day--we met our mentors! It was nerve-wracking and also exciting because we were all so eager to find out who they were, but at the same time nervous about what we were simply going to talk about for at least an hour. Two of my mentors showed up, and the other I actually met this week. They're all super different in their backgrounds and have a lot to offer; I can think of one mentor who will make sure that whatever I turn in has beautiful code, another will guide me to make my project look great presentation wise, and the third one can give me lots of guidance in interviewing.
Just in the few conversations I've had with them I've definitely changed my perception on job hunting in the industry; before, I'd always thought I'd want to work for a company whose product I use all the time...I definitely still feel this way, but since the world is oftentimes the opposite of perfect, my mentor suggested I widen my reach and revise my thinking instead to be: I'd want to work for a company whose product I directly OR indirectly use. In other words, building a product that you simply know many people use--even if it's not yourself--can bring great satisfaction.
Thursday
Testing, testing 1 2 3. We took a dive into debugging and testing in the lectures, but not before we had to get more practice with using Flask in our morning lab pair programming. My partner and I decided to power through lunch to get as much as we could get done in the exercise, as it was a really lofty one with many "layers" of thinking and conceptualizing involved for each step of the solution.
Also, I'm continually amazed at how much work our instructors and staff put into creating the exercises, homework, assessments, and any accompanying material. Not only do they make the instructions entertaining to read, but they also even go so far as to create functioning websites of the imaginary businesses and characters featured again and again in our materials.
I gave my tech talk this afternoon as well; I thought I kind of just fumbled through it without much preparation (I did not want to psych myself out; this tends to happen when I practice giving a presentation and hear the horrible sound that is my own voice), but I'm happy to say that everyone paid attention til the end and asked me questions. One of my cohort mates went so far as to tell me the next day that she enjoyed my lightning talk!
Friday
So, there was a city-wide (ok, not actually true; it only hit downtown and the adjacent neighborhoods which basically means city-wide during the day) power outage! For some reason this did not compute in my head when I was crossing all the streets that had no working traffic signals or lights. I just thought it was some construction going on.
We managed to get some review in for the previous week's assessment before lunch. One of my amazing cohort mates took 10+ of us on a field trip to her Google office for free lunch!! So many of us were super excited to finally be able to experience the coveted free tech company meal, in particular Google's. However as we were rushing back to try to make it back to our 2pm lecture we found out Hackbright was gonna call it a day. It was both a great and also worrying thing for me because it was great to be able to enjoy the sunshine and some much needed day drinking, but also worrisome that we would be behind our schedule on learning...and also--of course I decided not to charge my phone before leaving the house that morning because I thought I could just do it at lecture. But of course the day I make this decision there is a power outage, so I felt I was worried about being powerless in a powerless city the whole time and couldn't stay with my cohortmates for that long lest I risk not being able to meet up with Jesse afterwards.
So after getting a drink at Mojo with the ladies I called it a day with them, met up with Jesse and the Spritz team for drinks, got more drinks with Jesse and his friend and went home happily full for a relaxing weekend!
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Hackbright Week 2: A Rollercoaster of Emotions
Monday
Mondays are hard, emotionally and physically. It's hard to reboot from a weekend of relaxation and relatively easy skills assessment, and even harder to delve deep into a subject of Python I'm not all too comfortable with--dictionaries. Even though our lecturers have a knack of explaining things in a really easy, almost matter-of-fact way that clarifies confusing concepts to us (or at least to me), our knowledge is usually truly put to the test during lab. I was paired with an awesome partner who resonated my exact thoughts on being on the same wavelength and page (of the dictionary, so to speak) as each other, and it made dictionaries seem so much less daunting.
All in all, I was so glad we got to practice using dictionaries as a counting tool, but I still feel I need some practice to solidify my comfort in storing this particular way to solve problems when it comes to counting occurrences of things in Python.
In the afternoon, just as I was feeling like my introverted self was starting to really surface, I found out that I was to pair by none other than myself! To be honest, I was pretty excited to see how this would go, because I've always wondered how fast I could get one of our lab exercises done alone, and I was ready to rise up to the challenge. It was not long after that I began to realize why the "two heads are better than one" concept really holds true; I was stuck on something for a quite a bit and realized later that it was something small and rather trivial that I overlooked, and lamented to the lack of a partner who would have for sure caught that in a heartbeat as a I was typing.
Great lesson learned; as much as pair programming can be daunting and unnatural, it is necessary for faster growth!
Tuesday
This was one of the more difficult days (if not most) for me so far in this program. As I mentioned, I'm not that great at dictionaries to begin with, and my confidence took a blow when it came to using dictionaries on our Markov Chains lab exercise. It was fascinating to learn about Markov Chains and how this algorithm works, but putting it to practice was a doozy.
It usually takes me a minute or two of thinking logistically how I would design and write my code before I delve in because I like keeping track of when, why, and how I should place things where I think they should be. That way, at least I'll have an idea of where it might have broken if/when it does and trace the bugs from there. However, this isn't the same approach other people might take, and it can sometimes make me feel like I'm not processing info or coming up with plausible solutions as fast as my partner is. I definitely do not enjoy feeling like I'm not bringing enough code to the table. In the end though, I told myself that it's whether I can review and retain the information that matters the most.
Wednesday
We continued working on our Markov Chains lab exercise today, this time with a "real world" application courtesy of Twitter's API. My partner and I got a little too ambitious with our content idea for our tweet generator that we ended up in data cleaning hell for the last hour or so until the end of the day. Dirty data, I hope our encounters will be infrequent and short.
On a happier note, my advisor approved my independent project idea! He said he liked it a lot and immediately understood how and why I wanted to build it, and was able to give examples of how he can see it being used in real life situations. Even though I know it's not always a good thing to seek validation to feel good about yourself, I think that it was quite rewarding in this particular case as it was coming from someone who is an expert in code, knows what is feasible for me, and can be a great resource when the time comes to get me there. It's truly a wonderful feeling!
I also met with Jen from Career Services during lunch hour for my career strategy session. As it turns out, she and I have a good amount of history and interests in common! We both enjoy doing artsy, creative stuff. We were both in our Yearbook teams in high school, wanted to become graphic designers at some point in high school/college, and ended up where we are now because of it. She's also a huge foodie!
Thursday
After all that Markov Chains stuff, I had thought that everything would just get even harder with Python classes, as classes are always something that online courses and books get to last. They are a lofty subject and hard to drill into your brain, but I think all those long paragraphs of explanations, analogies, and such from Learn Python the Hard Way really helped drive the core concepts into my brain for months prior to Hackbright, so it was actually pretty easy for me follow along our lectures on this topic.
And who knew you can actually draw things with Python? That was a cool thing to discover!
After class I wanted to revisit some old stomping grounds, and decided to nestle somewhere familiar to me pre-Hackbright: PyLadies study group! I could actually feel my body relax from all the tension that's been accumulating in my brain these past two weeks just by stepping into Clover Health. I was so happy to see the nice security guy at the elevators, the study group hosts, the neatly lined rows of tea and drinks in the fridge, and the [leftover] food.
We also got to see a great presentation from our guest speaker on how she analyzed social media groups, content, and activity around the 2016 presidential elections. It honestly made me feel just a tad bit smarter being able to recognize some of the libraries/modules she used in her data scraping and analyses that I would otherwise have no clue about if it weren't for Hackbright.
Friday
Classes galore! We stayed with our Thu partners for lab and advanced into more complicated features of Python classes. I had always been instructed to stay away from class inheritance, especially multiple inheritance (as LPTHW tells it, like princes of fairytales who cannot un-discover a forbidden forest that hides the dragon he must defeat, novice programmers cannot resist the lure of inheritance in classes), but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. If anything, our lectures on inheritance actually helped me solidify my knowledge on classes as a whole. Even if I may not end up using a ton of child classes that spawn off a million other parent ones in my code (who knows), at least I'll know how to do it if I ever need to venture into that forbidden forest!
At the end of the day, we had a nice, relaxing pizza social. No card games this time, just plain ol' talking, which suited me just fine!
----
Last Thoughts
This week's skills assessment was long. Like cancel-hangout-plans-with-friend-halfway-through-Sunday-because-this-will-take-10-hours-long long. I felt bad, as I haven't met up with Yammi in a while, but she completely understands, which is awesome. Focusing on this program has become my top priority, and it's a comfort knowing I have supportive friends and family who get that I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn't complete the assessment on time knowing I could have had more time to do it.
Also, can I just say that there must be some kind of rewiring happening in your brain when you transition into a [software] engineer that makes you start having an affinity for stickers?? Jesse has always enjoyed collecting stickers and putting them on his notebooks, dresser, etc. right away, and I've always kind of laughed at this eccentric behavior. However, now I find myself drawn to all the various GitHub Octocat stickers, and even just the random ones at meetups, shops, etc. Jesse is trying to credit himself for getting my on this track but I honestly think it's the little engineer in me slowly but surely showing her true colors.
Mondays are hard, emotionally and physically. It's hard to reboot from a weekend of relaxation and relatively easy skills assessment, and even harder to delve deep into a subject of Python I'm not all too comfortable with--dictionaries. Even though our lecturers have a knack of explaining things in a really easy, almost matter-of-fact way that clarifies confusing concepts to us (or at least to me), our knowledge is usually truly put to the test during lab. I was paired with an awesome partner who resonated my exact thoughts on being on the same wavelength and page (of the dictionary, so to speak) as each other, and it made dictionaries seem so much less daunting.
All in all, I was so glad we got to practice using dictionaries as a counting tool, but I still feel I need some practice to solidify my comfort in storing this particular way to solve problems when it comes to counting occurrences of things in Python.
In the afternoon, just as I was feeling like my introverted self was starting to really surface, I found out that I was to pair by none other than myself! To be honest, I was pretty excited to see how this would go, because I've always wondered how fast I could get one of our lab exercises done alone, and I was ready to rise up to the challenge. It was not long after that I began to realize why the "two heads are better than one" concept really holds true; I was stuck on something for a quite a bit and realized later that it was something small and rather trivial that I overlooked, and lamented to the lack of a partner who would have for sure caught that in a heartbeat as a I was typing.
Great lesson learned; as much as pair programming can be daunting and unnatural, it is necessary for faster growth!
Tuesday
This was one of the more difficult days (if not most) for me so far in this program. As I mentioned, I'm not that great at dictionaries to begin with, and my confidence took a blow when it came to using dictionaries on our Markov Chains lab exercise. It was fascinating to learn about Markov Chains and how this algorithm works, but putting it to practice was a doozy.
It usually takes me a minute or two of thinking logistically how I would design and write my code before I delve in because I like keeping track of when, why, and how I should place things where I think they should be. That way, at least I'll have an idea of where it might have broken if/when it does and trace the bugs from there. However, this isn't the same approach other people might take, and it can sometimes make me feel like I'm not processing info or coming up with plausible solutions as fast as my partner is. I definitely do not enjoy feeling like I'm not bringing enough code to the table. In the end though, I told myself that it's whether I can review and retain the information that matters the most.
Wednesday
We continued working on our Markov Chains lab exercise today, this time with a "real world" application courtesy of Twitter's API. My partner and I got a little too ambitious with our content idea for our tweet generator that we ended up in data cleaning hell for the last hour or so until the end of the day. Dirty data, I hope our encounters will be infrequent and short.
On a happier note, my advisor approved my independent project idea! He said he liked it a lot and immediately understood how and why I wanted to build it, and was able to give examples of how he can see it being used in real life situations. Even though I know it's not always a good thing to seek validation to feel good about yourself, I think that it was quite rewarding in this particular case as it was coming from someone who is an expert in code, knows what is feasible for me, and can be a great resource when the time comes to get me there. It's truly a wonderful feeling!
I also met with Jen from Career Services during lunch hour for my career strategy session. As it turns out, she and I have a good amount of history and interests in common! We both enjoy doing artsy, creative stuff. We were both in our Yearbook teams in high school, wanted to become graphic designers at some point in high school/college, and ended up where we are now because of it. She's also a huge foodie!
Thursday
After all that Markov Chains stuff, I had thought that everything would just get even harder with Python classes, as classes are always something that online courses and books get to last. They are a lofty subject and hard to drill into your brain, but I think all those long paragraphs of explanations, analogies, and such from Learn Python the Hard Way really helped drive the core concepts into my brain for months prior to Hackbright, so it was actually pretty easy for me follow along our lectures on this topic.
And who knew you can actually draw things with Python? That was a cool thing to discover!
After class I wanted to revisit some old stomping grounds, and decided to nestle somewhere familiar to me pre-Hackbright: PyLadies study group! I could actually feel my body relax from all the tension that's been accumulating in my brain these past two weeks just by stepping into Clover Health. I was so happy to see the nice security guy at the elevators, the study group hosts, the neatly lined rows of tea and drinks in the fridge, and the [leftover] food.
We also got to see a great presentation from our guest speaker on how she analyzed social media groups, content, and activity around the 2016 presidential elections. It honestly made me feel just a tad bit smarter being able to recognize some of the libraries/modules she used in her data scraping and analyses that I would otherwise have no clue about if it weren't for Hackbright.
Friday
Classes galore! We stayed with our Thu partners for lab and advanced into more complicated features of Python classes. I had always been instructed to stay away from class inheritance, especially multiple inheritance (as LPTHW tells it, like princes of fairytales who cannot un-discover a forbidden forest that hides the dragon he must defeat, novice programmers cannot resist the lure of inheritance in classes), but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. If anything, our lectures on inheritance actually helped me solidify my knowledge on classes as a whole. Even if I may not end up using a ton of child classes that spawn off a million other parent ones in my code (who knows), at least I'll know how to do it if I ever need to venture into that forbidden forest!
At the end of the day, we had a nice, relaxing pizza social. No card games this time, just plain ol' talking, which suited me just fine!
----
Last Thoughts
This week's skills assessment was long. Like cancel-hangout-plans-with-friend-halfway-through-Sunday-because-this-will-take-10-hours-long long. I felt bad, as I haven't met up with Yammi in a while, but she completely understands, which is awesome. Focusing on this program has become my top priority, and it's a comfort knowing I have supportive friends and family who get that I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn't complete the assessment on time knowing I could have had more time to do it.
Also, can I just say that there must be some kind of rewiring happening in your brain when you transition into a [software] engineer that makes you start having an affinity for stickers?? Jesse has always enjoyed collecting stickers and putting them on his notebooks, dresser, etc. right away, and I've always kind of laughed at this eccentric behavior. However, now I find myself drawn to all the various GitHub Octocat stickers, and even just the random ones at meetups, shops, etc. Jesse is trying to credit himself for getting my on this track but I honestly think it's the little engineer in me slowly but surely showing her true colors.
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Hackbright Week 1: Excitement, Exhaustion, Rainy Thoughts, and Anticipation
I've officially completed my first week of Hackbright, including the very first weekend skills assessment homework! I think it's safe to say that it has all been what I've been expecting and more. It still feels surreal that I'm now back in "school" in an environment where my main purpose is to learn, learn, and learn more. I'm not bogged down by the need to please clients or write a million replies to emails. Instead I'm focused on just me and the betterment of myself.
First things first, can I just say that I've never had more need to snack, sleep, and recharge from all the extroverted activities we've had to do? I've never been much of a snacker...more of a sit-down-and-eat-a-nice-filling-meal-at-the-end-of-the-day kind of person. However, now that we're constantly being injected with so much new info and knowledge each day, it's like my brain is burning through its fuel so fast that it can barely keep up without an hourly dosage of granola.
Day 1: Excitement
I think I can safely speak for everyone in my cohort that there was not a single soul there not to be excited in the presence of other strong, likeminded women. Here I was, in the cream of the crop of picks at Hackbright, finally fulfilling my dream! We spend a good half of the day going through the long but necessary laundry list of housekeeping details.
Later, we split up into our Hogwarts houses (Gryffindor--I've always known I'd be in your house!), met our fellow housemates, came up with our attendance cheer ("Code More!"), and split for lunch. I had a great time getting to know a few of my cohort mates as we bonded over talk of food. In the afternoon, we had a short lecture on mazes and algorithms, and split into pairs for our first pair programming session. Even after having slogged through the painfulness of Scratch before, I was apparently still not immune to Blocky's similar traps. I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around these programs.
Day 2: Exhaustion
With the lack of sleep from the past week, the exhaustion had started to really kick in by Day 2. I found myself really focused in lectures and engaged in conversation, but by the afternoon I was really starting to feel that sleep would be a big component in ensuring success in this program.
Two of the biggest things I learned on this day?
1. Try to give things a try, and not just on the “try / except” statements (sorry, I had to do it), but in opening my mind to new ways of thinking and being willing to break code to make code (as aptly put by one of our TAs). I was so set on how my partner and I should place our code in this newly introduced method that I felt bad when our instructor came over, broke what we thought was a good code, and showed us that what my partner had suggested might be a solution was right after all. Also, being exposed to the beauty of the “while True” loop was not lost on me; thanks pair programming partner! You have opened my eyes to why two heads is better than one.
2. There is no way I should think that I could go out on a weekday night now and not suffer. I went to my boyfriend’s friend’s birthday dinner in Palo Alto after class, and as birthdays go, ended up staying there until close to midnight. What happened at the dinner? I can’t really say because the whole time I was there I wasn’t there; all I could think about was sleep and homework. Lesson learned: stay close to home on weekday nights lest you want to be the Debbie Downer of the bunch!
Day 3: Accomplishment
Nothing says a good week like a good Hump Day. Though I was still tired from the night/week before, I came in ready to tackle the day.
During pair programming, my partner and I honed in on math functions/operators and with every additional “Further Study” challenge we completed, the more I could feel my confidence get a small boost. My partner reminded me the useful range() function when it comes to iterating over an arbitrary number of arguments that a user inputs. range() has always been a weak spot for me as it hasn’t been drilled in my head that it is a number (or set range of numbers), and not an actual list to iterate over. I feel like I still need to solidify my comfortableness in using range() in the next couple of days.
In the afternoon, my partner and I were so engrossed with our self-made calculator that we decided to power through the challenges until the end of the day. It was an immense feeling of accomplishment that could not be beat by even the throbbing headache that ensued afterwards.
My boyfriend being the saint he is, came over to cook me dinner while I napped off the headache. Needless to say, I cannot be grateful enough for the wonderful support system I have so close to home!
Day 4: Rainy Thoughts
First things first, can I just say that I've never had more need to snack, sleep, and recharge from all the extroverted activities we've had to do? I've never been much of a snacker...more of a sit-down-and-eat-a-nice-filling-meal-at-the-end-of-the-day kind of person. However, now that we're constantly being injected with so much new info and knowledge each day, it's like my brain is burning through its fuel so fast that it can barely keep up without an hourly dosage of granola.
Day 1: Excitement
I think I can safely speak for everyone in my cohort that there was not a single soul there not to be excited in the presence of other strong, likeminded women. Here I was, in the cream of the crop of picks at Hackbright, finally fulfilling my dream! We spend a good half of the day going through the long but necessary laundry list of housekeeping details.
Later, we split up into our Hogwarts houses (Gryffindor--I've always known I'd be in your house!), met our fellow housemates, came up with our attendance cheer ("Code More!"), and split for lunch. I had a great time getting to know a few of my cohort mates as we bonded over talk of food. In the afternoon, we had a short lecture on mazes and algorithms, and split into pairs for our first pair programming session. Even after having slogged through the painfulness of Scratch before, I was apparently still not immune to Blocky's similar traps. I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around these programs.
Day 2: Exhaustion
With the lack of sleep from the past week, the exhaustion had started to really kick in by Day 2. I found myself really focused in lectures and engaged in conversation, but by the afternoon I was really starting to feel that sleep would be a big component in ensuring success in this program.
Two of the biggest things I learned on this day?
1. Try to give things a try, and not just on the “try / except” statements (sorry, I had to do it), but in opening my mind to new ways of thinking and being willing to break code to make code (as aptly put by one of our TAs). I was so set on how my partner and I should place our code in this newly introduced method that I felt bad when our instructor came over, broke what we thought was a good code, and showed us that what my partner had suggested might be a solution was right after all. Also, being exposed to the beauty of the “while True” loop was not lost on me; thanks pair programming partner! You have opened my eyes to why two heads is better than one.
2. There is no way I should think that I could go out on a weekday night now and not suffer. I went to my boyfriend’s friend’s birthday dinner in Palo Alto after class, and as birthdays go, ended up staying there until close to midnight. What happened at the dinner? I can’t really say because the whole time I was there I wasn’t there; all I could think about was sleep and homework. Lesson learned: stay close to home on weekday nights lest you want to be the Debbie Downer of the bunch!
Day 3: Accomplishment
Nothing says a good week like a good Hump Day. Though I was still tired from the night/week before, I came in ready to tackle the day.
During pair programming, my partner and I honed in on math functions/operators and with every additional “Further Study” challenge we completed, the more I could feel my confidence get a small boost. My partner reminded me the useful range() function when it comes to iterating over an arbitrary number of arguments that a user inputs. range() has always been a weak spot for me as it hasn’t been drilled in my head that it is a number (or set range of numbers), and not an actual list to iterate over. I feel like I still need to solidify my comfortableness in using range() in the next couple of days.
In the afternoon, my partner and I were so engrossed with our self-made calculator that we decided to power through the challenges until the end of the day. It was an immense feeling of accomplishment that could not be beat by even the throbbing headache that ensued afterwards.
My boyfriend being the saint he is, came over to cook me dinner while I napped off the headache. Needless to say, I cannot be grateful enough for the wonderful support system I have so close to home!
Day 4: Rainy Thoughts
So I knew this day would come; I had always felt the self-doubt bubbling beneath the surface long before Hackbright, but it didn’t really come out to play until Day 4 when I felt myself struggling to keep up with my partner on coming up with solutions to create our own list functions that didn’t use built in list methods like extend, append, etc.
Just FYI My partner did give me full disclosure that she had experience in the material, which I really appreciated because when I was struggling to understand how she came to the solution she did, I was able to pick her brains on her thought process. She was really patient in explaining it over and over again until the light bulb started glowing, although it did not fully light up until I took the opportunity to read the code repeatedly while she was at her advising session.
I guess I thought I had the concept of lists down before this day, but it turns out that slicing them is a whole other beast.
To top it off, it started storming that day, which I’d like to think was a reflection of my own mood, and while I was walking in the rain armed with groceries to the Powell Muni station, I realized I had left my coffee cup still half full of coffee on the shag rug in the lecture hall. To ease my mind, I ended up walking back to Hackbright, found out someone had already cleaned up my mess, and decided to leave a “sorry” post-it next to my seat.
Day 5: Fri-Yay!
By the time Day 5 rolled around, I decided to take the encouraging notes plastered all over Hackbright to heart and reminded myself that hard as it may be, this is not an arms race. Everyone learns at their own pace and are their own benchmark of success. Did I acquire knowledge I didn’t know a week ago? Hell yes. Did I push myself out of my comfort zone? I would say so!
It was great being able to socialize with the Hackbright staff during our Friday night social. I got to know a bit more about Joel, Kiko, and Ahmad that I don’t think I would have otherwise been able to. It was also just nice being able to relax and have a good laugh with everyone during Taboo.
I can’t wait to learn more and finally be able to acquire all the knowledge I need to build my independent project and call it my own!
Just FYI My partner did give me full disclosure that she had experience in the material, which I really appreciated because when I was struggling to understand how she came to the solution she did, I was able to pick her brains on her thought process. She was really patient in explaining it over and over again until the light bulb started glowing, although it did not fully light up until I took the opportunity to read the code repeatedly while she was at her advising session.
I guess I thought I had the concept of lists down before this day, but it turns out that slicing them is a whole other beast.
To top it off, it started storming that day, which I’d like to think was a reflection of my own mood, and while I was walking in the rain armed with groceries to the Powell Muni station, I realized I had left my coffee cup still half full of coffee on the shag rug in the lecture hall. To ease my mind, I ended up walking back to Hackbright, found out someone had already cleaned up my mess, and decided to leave a “sorry” post-it next to my seat.
Day 5: Fri-Yay!
By the time Day 5 rolled around, I decided to take the encouraging notes plastered all over Hackbright to heart and reminded myself that hard as it may be, this is not an arms race. Everyone learns at their own pace and are their own benchmark of success. Did I acquire knowledge I didn’t know a week ago? Hell yes. Did I push myself out of my comfort zone? I would say so!
It was great being able to socialize with the Hackbright staff during our Friday night social. I got to know a bit more about Joel, Kiko, and Ahmad that I don’t think I would have otherwise been able to. It was also just nice being able to relax and have a good laugh with everyone during Taboo.
I can’t wait to learn more and finally be able to acquire all the knowledge I need to build my independent project and call it my own!
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