This was me last Tuesday, minutes before I officially started Viking Code School:
(Luckily, Molly captured the moment and posted it Instagram for all the world to see. Unluckily, her account is private, so I can’t embed it here.)
In retrospect, I thought I was prepared for what the next four days would involve. And in many ways I was: I feel good about my Ruby skills coming and I was prepared for the long hours. But there was so so much that was different than I thought.
- Coding put me in a really good mood. I don’t really know why yet, but it just does. I expected to get to 9 pm every night and trudge up the stairs in exhaustion. But I’ve pretty much been gliding up, riding a wave of energy from having finished a challenging and meaningful day. I’ll start eating my late dinner but barely get any bites in because I want to tell Molly and my parents all about my partner, my project, what I learned, what was hard, what I fixed, what I got stuck on — everything! So for having just spent 10 hours working, my energy levels at the end of the day have been surprisingly high.
- Working with a partner has not been awkward. In fact, it’s been great. Before starting the program, one of my biggest concerns was how the partner programming would work. While I have had no problem working in groups at my job, that was always more discussion based, so I had no idea what to expect from working with someone on such a concrete task as coding. But to my delight, it’s gone really well. I’ve learned a ton from each partner, but also feel like I’ve been able to teach them new things as well. And on the technology side the screensharing, git pulling and pushing, and communication has all gone swimmingly. Which leads me to my last big point…
- All the technology and logistics that make VCS run have worked well. This was a big concern: Would all this Google Hanging out really work well? What would the lag time be like? Would my partner and I end up talking over each a lot. The reality has been fantastic — the picture has been crystal clear and I’ve been able to see my partner’s code and hear them well. I also really like that in the Main Hangout room, since the list of participants are always in alphabetical order by name, each student is always in the same spot. For some reason, it’s nice to know that each of these bobbing heads — my fellow students — stays in the same little home each time we meet.
I could probably go on and on about the many things, big and small, which I loved about the first week at VCS, but let’s be honest, I need to get back to my reading and make sure I’m ready for the assessment tomorrow.
I hope this post doesn’t jinx anything (and I don’t think it will). I know that the week was only 4 days. And that it was only some new material, coupled with solidifying things we already knew. And that I should maybe expect the readings to get longer and more confusing. But even taking all that into account, it’s hard not to be excited — based on what Week 1 was like — for the next 15 weeks of Viking Code School.
Onward!
