The start of a conscientious course — Odd beginnings
I’m beginning to write this on the second day of the full-time course. I think I’ll jot something down every other day and post this at the end of the week and if it gets too long, I might split it into two. A little thought journal of the first week.
Tuesday, 02/03
It’s not quite what I expected. I mean I don’t know why I didn’t expect it, they were very transparent about their approach as a company. It’s all very holistic, very into the philosophy of “there are no wrong ways to do something”. It’s good, it definitely helps ease the mind when you’re stressing over something — but not what I expected. Perhaps, in my slightly cynical way, I didn’t actually expect a company to follow through with what they say and that might have something to do with my previous experience working with other companies, the holistic message tends to get lost in the day-to-day aspect of work life. It is refreshing, but it will take a tad bit of getting used to.
Today was a real first group work day which I really enjoyed. Obviously I had paired prior to this, but that was when I had a problem and was looking for a fresh pair of eyes. No, today was different, we worked as a team on a challenge and it was really good, I felt like I learnt a lot from the other two I was working with. It helped me realise, that I might be a little too hard on myself and I really should end the day on a positive note.
For example, I got quite stuck when it was my turn to drive and I relied quite a bit on one of my navigators and still couldn’t get through the problem. As a result I kept saying some rather negative things about my performance and I keep needing to remind myself that it isn’t so awful that I am making mistakes. So I think I might end today on a positive note, something I did today that impressed myself with — It doesn’t have to be strictly coding, but I should get into the habit of praising myself.
I’m really pleased with how much I knew about RSpec. I actually did pretty well.
Thursday, 02/03
Oh boy today was a tough day. I paired with somebody where there was an obvious disparity in our skill levels and through no fault of theirs, it made for a relatively uncomfortable experience. I found it really hard to understand the reasoning behind some of their decisions but in my own uncertainty of my ability I just listened and typed. I feel like it would be in my best interest moving forward to be upfront with my partner and say “Hey look, I really don’t understand where we’re going. Could we please slow it down and meet in the middle”. This is less a “they need to accommodate me” thing and more “I need to do better to speak up and absorb what is being said”.
Sunday, 07/03
I decided to take a good day off for Saturday. I definitely feel like that is best practice to recharge my mind by keeping firmly away from the Mac.
The weekend challenge was the airport challenge, and honestly the first 3 user stories went quite well! I really implemented what I used from the Boris Bike challenge. Where I hit a snag was user stories 4 & 5 which kept throwing up failures “but nothing was raised” and for one of them it was intermittently passing…I think I just had my experience with a flaky test.
I really tried finding a reason why they kept throwing up but I couldn’t understand how to apply any of the answers to my code. I isolated the problem and I vaguely understand why but perhaps I need to look more into how objects interact.
Today is the beginning of Week 2, I feel like I need to shift my approach, perhaps lean into the idea of moving onto something else if I get particularly stuck and dragging tasks out throughout the week instead of wasting a day on one specific thing.
