Week 2 Summary; And, the Not-So-Rosy-Side
It's Tuesday morning, and I'm just now getting around to writing this post. Last week was a decided ramp-up in challenges. In particular, classes (the thing, not the activity) proved to be...well, challenging (to say the least). Last weekend's skills assessments (dictionaries & classes) basically took me all weekend, and I couldn't finish them entirely. The last function in the dictionaries section was ridiculously hard, and I only got through 3 sections of 5 in the classes section.
It had already been a pretty awful weekend (I missed a concert on Saturday night that I'd been looking forward to for a long time, because I couldn't find ANY parking in SF, there was some sort of special event going on), so that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the weekend. Probably one reason why I got extra-frustrated with the assessments on Sunday. By the time it came time to turn them in, I found myself questioning whether I could really hack it in this fellowship.
However, yesterday morning when I got to school, the general consensus among most fellows was that they had a very similar experience with the assessments, and a lot didn't finish as well (I talked to 3 gals who did finish, and they didn't seem to have much difficulty with it). Obviously, I'm not glad so many of us had trouble with it, but I'm glad I wasn't the only one, so I don't feel quite so bad about it now.
I have to remind myself that I'm not going to be perfect or quick at everything right off the bat. We're having a LOT of information thrown at us in a very concentrated period of time...one does not become a software engineer overnight. I just need to keep working at classes (and anything else that's difficult for me), practice TONS. I tend to be a perfectionist (I was pissed off at myself for getting 2 B's in grad school), but it's important to remind myself not to beat myself up.
Speaking of concentrated learning...there's actually a term for it: Active Method Learning. One of our instructors, Joel, told us that that's the pedagological method used at Hackbright. It's an intense, immersive model of learning, and they don't expect that we'll retain every little bit of information right away--realistically, probably about 80%. So that's a good statistic to keep in mind too.
Moving to the topic of yesterday, our subject matter was HTML & CSS, which I'm comfortable with at least the basics of, from my course at the Stride Center, and the Intro class. Labs and homework were a breeze compared to classes! I have to think the staff timed those lectures to give us something of a mental break after the full-fledged brain-draining week/weekend we just had. Very much appreciated.
So...I gotta remind myself often to be gentle with myself, and that I'm actually doing pretty well. I'll keep working on classes, and the understanding will increase.
Career coffee starts in half an hour, so I'm going to get some breakfast and COFFEE. I'll be writing another post in the next day or so about my project idea...for now, I'll just say that it's going to be some sort of music visualizer.
And here is a picture of me & Stress Dog both waking up. :D
It had already been a pretty awful weekend (I missed a concert on Saturday night that I'd been looking forward to for a long time, because I couldn't find ANY parking in SF, there was some sort of special event going on), so that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the weekend. Probably one reason why I got extra-frustrated with the assessments on Sunday. By the time it came time to turn them in, I found myself questioning whether I could really hack it in this fellowship.
However, yesterday morning when I got to school, the general consensus among most fellows was that they had a very similar experience with the assessments, and a lot didn't finish as well (I talked to 3 gals who did finish, and they didn't seem to have much difficulty with it). Obviously, I'm not glad so many of us had trouble with it, but I'm glad I wasn't the only one, so I don't feel quite so bad about it now.
I have to remind myself that I'm not going to be perfect or quick at everything right off the bat. We're having a LOT of information thrown at us in a very concentrated period of time...one does not become a software engineer overnight. I just need to keep working at classes (and anything else that's difficult for me), practice TONS. I tend to be a perfectionist (I was pissed off at myself for getting 2 B's in grad school), but it's important to remind myself not to beat myself up.
Speaking of concentrated learning...there's actually a term for it: Active Method Learning. One of our instructors, Joel, told us that that's the pedagological method used at Hackbright. It's an intense, immersive model of learning, and they don't expect that we'll retain every little bit of information right away--realistically, probably about 80%. So that's a good statistic to keep in mind too.
Moving to the topic of yesterday, our subject matter was HTML & CSS, which I'm comfortable with at least the basics of, from my course at the Stride Center, and the Intro class. Labs and homework were a breeze compared to classes! I have to think the staff timed those lectures to give us something of a mental break after the full-fledged brain-draining week/weekend we just had. Very much appreciated.
So...I gotta remind myself often to be gentle with myself, and that I'm actually doing pretty well. I'll keep working on classes, and the understanding will increase.
Career coffee starts in half an hour, so I'm going to get some breakfast and COFFEE. I'll be writing another post in the next day or so about my project idea...for now, I'll just say that it's going to be some sort of music visualizer.
And here is a picture of me & Stress Dog both waking up. :D
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