Onward

Heh, so obviously I failed at posting everyday... I'm almost done with Coding Dojo. (Our cohort is going a bit long.) It's been a great experience. I've learned soooo much. I keep feeling like I haven't learned much until I start talking about each language and program I've done with people and I realize that it all would have been gibberish to me a few months ago so that's a cool feeling. The other thing I've realized is that coding isn't what I want to do with the rest of my life... yet. These few months I've been trying to figure out the plan. Do I go to Seattle? San Francisco? Do I want to work for a startup? an established company? Do I want a job where I go into the office so that I have structure or do I want a remote job so I can work anytime, anywhere? The answer I've come up with. I don't know. Maybe none of the above?! I'm not ready to pick a place I've only spent a few days in and settle there. I haven't experienced enough to pick a job to do for the rest of my life. And as much as I love the comfort of my laptop, staying in my comfort zone is boring. I want to meet people, see places, experience things. At least until I come across something that makes me want to stay. There are so few moments in my life where I loop back and feel that I was exactly where I should have been. Doing something that how ever many years later, feels worthwhile. So, right now I am looking at different volunteer opportunities abroad. Specifically volunteer opportunities that don't cost thousands of dollars as I'm basically broke. I don't have the money so I'll need something where I work my way. I feel like that will be more rewarding anyway.

That's my news. Sorry it's been so long since I posted!

Coding Dojo: Day 2

So apparently I saved it as a draft instead of posting it, but here is my post from yesterday.

Well, it's day two! The meeting yesterday went well. It was pretty basic orientation stuff. It seems that all the meetings are going to be via Skype with no video other than to see what's happening on out instructors screen. Not sure how I feel about that. I mean I get that it's good cause students don't have to buy webcams if their computer doesn't have it built in, but I was kind of planning on these meetings making up for my lost interactions. I don't know. Most of the time I am happy to be by myself, and I love my room. But I'm starting to feel like Rapunzel trapped in her tower. I need human interaction, and my mom isn't cutting it. Ah well, I'll figure something out. Onto my next concern...

We have group meetings twice a week, and one-on-one meetings twice a week. These one-on-one meetings only last half an hour. That means I'm only getting an hour a week working with my instructor on the things that I need to work on. Their program is well written, and I tend to be very self sufficient so I may not need more than that. Still, I am trying to use this to launch a career so I find the lack of face time with my instructor even though it's an online program to be concerning to say the least.

But like I said, their program is very well set up. I got through all of the current reading on CSS, so now I've moved onto the assignments. They involve writing out the source html and CSS code of images of websites. The html takes me 5-10 minutes. I've worked with html a long time and it's pretty straight forward so that part is easy. The CSS takes a lot longer. I have worked with CSS quite a bit in the past, but it wasn't taught well, and I would often end up with a really convoluted code to get the output I wanted. Trying to write things properly and still get them where I want them is proving to be more challenging. Anyway, I should get back to work.

Coding Dojo: Day 1

The day is finally here. The day my session officially starts. I finished all the beginning HTML work and am now on to CSS. I probably should have been able to get through all the CSS reading rather quickly, but reading all about CSS is excruciatingly tedious. (At least to me.) Especially considering the fact that I've already read all of this information in various forms when I have had to for other programs. The reading is quite simple, but I'm having trouble making myself focus on it. My mind keeps skipping over large amounts of it, and then I have to go back, and reread. I am determined however to read it the way they explain it so that I know I fully grasp the concepts the way they want me to. I am excited for when I get through the reading though. Then, after the quiz, I can get to the assignment. Despite my aversion to reading about it, I love writing CSS. So that is helping to motivate me to get through the reading.

I have a skype meeting in an hour for my orientation. I'm excited for that, and for getting to talk to my instructor. For now though, I think I'm going to take a lunch break. My parents brought me Olive Garden for my first day :)

One more day...

Well, my session at Coding Dojo starts tomorrow! Saying that I am super excited is an understatement. I have been working towards this ever since I left WSU a year ago. I've had a few setbacks along the way, but now I am here. It's going to be an amazing experience and jump start my career. I will admit though... A tiny bit of me is kind of dreading it. They say that their most successful students put in 90-95 hours a week. I intend to be one of those students. But that means if I take a day off a week, which they recommend, I will have to put in 15-16 hour days. Gross I know, but I'll be doing something I care about so I think I'll enjoy it. The problem lies in the fact that I won't have time to do anything else I enjoy; hang out with my friends, ski, play Magic, etc. That will be hard for me, but I know it will be worth it, and doing this program will open a lot of doors for me that are currently bolted shut. Anyway, I should go. I'm trying to get Netflix out of my system by getting one last good marathon in before tomorrow!!

5 days

Hello again,

As you may have noticed, I gave up on posting everyday. At least until my session actually starts. There just wasn't that much to say. I've been working on getting fully settled from the move, writing and rewriting algorithms, and watching CS lectures. On the bright side, my session starts in 5 days!! I'm excited. I've started to get in contact with other students in my cohort, and I just access to all the material so now I'm going to get back to work.

Waiting

Well it's been five days since I sent my email, and I have yet to get a response on my questions. It's now only 12 days until the sessions starts which means I've already lost nearly a third of the time that I had to spend on memorizing the algorithms. Therefore I am going to stop waiting. There are a few that I'm not 100% on, but most of them, I know my way is the most efficient way to go about it without using tools that we were specified not to use.

The good thing, is that I just redid all of the algorithms, and I'm already much faster than I was the first few times around to complete them. I love that my brain keeps working on problems even when I'm not focused on them. So I don't think this will be too much of a setback in that regard.

I have to admit, I'm at a loss when it comes to the projects. I do take solace in the fact that I have as much information as everyone else in my cohort so I shouldn't be behind, and if I am, I trust in my ability to catch up once the session starts. I will say that I am very much looking forward to when the session starts and the instructor will be readily available.

I'm back

Sorry for my absence. I've been really sick, but today I am feeling much better. There hasn't been much to report. For the most part I've been watching lectures of a CS class. I sent an email on Friday to the person at Coding Dojo who sent my acceptance, and all the information I needed for access to the pre-couse material. I knew she wasn't the person I should be sending my questions to, but I figured she could forward it to the right person. In the email I asked about three things.

The first was to ask for the answers to the algorithms I had solved. It's not hard to run code so I know that my answers are "correct", but I wanted to make sure they were the right answers. Normally I am all about solving things my own way as my way tends to be more efficient. That may sound bad to put it that way, but I've found through talking to people, and testing ways to do things that it's true. However, the point of these algorithms are to get you thinking about these problems in an efficient way. Get you thinking like a computer. I figure roughly 95% of my answers are about as efficient as possible using the tools we had, however I intend to memorize these algorithms to make things run quicker in the future, and It's a lot easier to not make a habit than to break it so I am waiting till I can check my answers before I memorize them.

The second thing I asked about was the projects. During the session, we will complete two projects. They recommend that you know what you want to build and start designing the blueprints for it before you start the session. I have no idea what I want to build. Nor do I know how advanced these projects should be. Should I build a website, a game, an operating system? Obviously not the latter since we only have like a week to work on each project, but I don't know how far along I will be when I start these projects. So I emailed and asked about those to get a better idea.

Lastly I asked about how to get in touch with the other members of my cohort. We will be working together, and helping each other along the way. They are the people who will be going through the same thing that I am, so I would like to contact them before the session starts.

Yesterday, I got an email back saying that she would forward the email to one of the instructors. This was followed by a copy of the forwarded email. I have since been added to the cohort email, but as far I can tell, that email is for the current session, and I have yet to hear back on my other points. Hopefully I'll hear back soon. I'm terrible at memorization, so I'm going to have to start working on those algorithms soon.