Week 1 Wrap-up; Stay Humble, Hustle Hard.

Stay Humble, Hustle Hard.  I came across that motto about a month before starting the fellowship, and I quickly adopted it as my own.  To become a software engineer, you gotta hustle *hard*...but you also need to stay humble. You don't know it all...and the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. Way back, when I was in my undergrad as a music performance major at Humboldt State, I was the type who, especially since I'd been very talented and always in the top of my section in high school, felt I had to play first clarinet on everything. Disputes often ensued over who was playing what, until our conductor nixed it by assigning a part rotation. And you know what? I learned the value of playing *every* part--first, second, and third. I actually came to really enjoy playing second, because you get some really cool inner lines that no one else in the ensemble has. And I became a much better musician in the process.

I have totally digressed. But as it relates to being a software engineer--in the "real world," you'll always be working as part of a team, and no one "plays first" all the time. Being an ensemble musician taught me a lot of important life lessons.

So! WEEK ONE! Where to start?!

The subject matter didn't cover any concepts I hadn't already been introduced to (with one exception--computer memory, which I didn't have much previous understanding of). But--we went a LOT deeper with it than what I'd been exposed to in the Intro class (to fill those who don't know in, I took the Hackbright Introduction to Programming class leading up to starting the fellowship). For the most part in the Intro class, we covered a concept (lists, functions, etc.), and exercises focused more or less exclusively on that topic (with the exception of our game & app projects). Not the case in the fellowship! We call on everything we've studied up to that point when doing lab exercises. This is training for a "real-life" software engineering career, when you'll *definitely* not just be using one thing to write a program. And that's pretty powerful. Learning to think like a software engineer is crazy in all the best ways. My brain seriously hurts after a day of programming--it's literally being re-wired at a rapid pace. And I couldn't be happier about it.

The first week was SO demanding. Not that I thought it wouldn't be, mind you. But really--that was just a warm-up! I very much appreciate that on Friday, at several points the staff reminded us to step away from our laptops for some "us time." So, Saturday I went into Berkeley with a good friend of mine who's presently going through a rough patch, and we went to Jupiter (one of my long-time favorite spots), had ciders & pizza, then went and watched Trainspotting 2 (my second time seeing it). Very enjoyable afternoon. I crashed HARD (and early) that night (we'll get to my sleep in a bit...) Sunday, I woke up, started my weekend skills assessment assignment around 10:30...which I ultimately finished up around 5-ish. Oy vey. I got stuck on one function, and realized I needed to leave it where it was, in the interest of continuing/finishing the assignment, and move on--no sense in going further down rabbit holes, and expending more mental energy on it when there was still a few hours worth of work to go. (I'll be going over that function with my advisor once we've received our scores.)

Sleep: it's a valuable commodity. I've been an insomniac for the better part of my life. Well, I guess that's partially accurate. I *like* staying up at night, it's always been my preference. So insomnia has not always been a curse. But re-wiring myself to wake up at 5:30 a.m. is NOT an easy adjustment to make. As a result, my average acquired sleep on a given night last week was probably somewhere around 4-4.5 hours. That's not going to work for long. I really need to force myself to put all screens away, turn on my white noise (my preferred choice is a 12-hour track on YouTube of the NCC-1701D engines on low volume), and hit the lights.

One thing that will probably help knock me out is the gym. I confess--I didn't go last week. It was already such a huge adjustment in schedule and activity level, I slacked on it. As I type now, though, I'm heading back to the East Bay on BART, and will be heading out to my gym (Fitness SF in Oakland) for a good workout. This needs to be a solid habit. If I get into a pattern of not going, I'll end up abandoning it for the duration of the fellowship, and I absolutely CANNOT let that happen! It's going to have to be a Sunday-Thursday schedule (vs. Monday-Friday), as there are social events most Fridays after class, but that's alright. At the end of the day at school, it's tempting to just go home, but once I'm actually at the gym and lifting, I'm always glad I chose to be there.

Alright, this post is getting lengthy, and my stop will be up soon. Next blog post, I'll talk about...

-- My morning schedule/routine before class
-- My topic for my lighting talk
-- Potential project ideas (well, what little shreds of ideas I have presently, it's not much so far)
-- General stories of fellowship experiences & interactions
-- And anything else that comes to mind

Will post this once I'm home from the gym...and it's Bates Motel night! (Tonight is the antepenultimate episode of the season, and series as a whole.)