Up All Night: No Code

Coffee coffee coffee

I’m furious. I’m absolutely, unequivocally, point-of-no-return, furious. And at myself. Which is why I made this publication on Medium.

The reason for this self-directed anger is because it’s week 4 of an 8-week term of my senior year at Make School and I haven’t made any discernible progress on any of my three technical courses: Intro to Machine Learning, Software Product Development, and Go.

There are a few things that have been going positively this term. For one, I haven’t missed a single class. For another, I feel much more motivated to tackle problems, ask for help, work with others, express interest and need.

These are things I haven’t had the pleasure of encountering for a very long time. Mostly due to my mental health. Before this term, I’ve been sorta just drifting through my classes and sleeping through my negative emotions.

But lately, I’ve been feeling a lot more alive. As if I cared about the things that were happening around me and to me.

I’ve attended every single class and sat in the very first row for the session, raised my hand and participated in every session, and asked questions when I didn’t understand something. But it’s not enough.

I need to put in the hours outside of class.

And this is where everything has gone wrong in the past few weeks. I’ve been competing in hackathons every single weekend since the beginning of this term. And it’s starting to take a toll.

I’ve been sleep deprived three weeks in a row and it’s starting to seep into my work week.

I also blame the trend of not coding for class assignments on the Facebook group called Subtle Asian Traits. I think I’ve spent a total of 3+ hours on it since discovering it a few days ago. Because it’s hilarious. And YouTube.

I could go on and on and talk about all the random things that distracted me from opening my terminal and editor to code, but it’s frankly embarrassing and I’m not sure I’m that sort of confessor.

Anyhow, TLDR, I’m mad that I haven’t followed through with leveling up through my technical courses for the past few weeks. As such, I’m tackling this problem by holding myself accountable through this publication by:

1. Promising(!) to publish one progress checker per day on this publication.
2. Spending time reflecting on the emotional and technical difficulties of working through code.
3. Practicing mindful, deliberate practice.
4. Ending with coding wins and practicing gratitude.

I’m excited to share my journey with you. There’s so much to work on and so much to do, so much to learn and share.