It begins!

After what seemed like the shortest summer, Makers Academy pre-course began at the end of August.

I’m striving to ensure that I’ve learnt a little bit more every single day and so far I think i’ve been pretty successful.

Week 2 was definitely the most challenging, as I completed a book of Ruby exercises. I will admit to feeling absolutely flummoxed on Sunday evening (before Monday morning hand-in) and stressing myself out more than I needed to. It didn’t help that Rory Hanratty and I attended a 12 hour (really 14 hour) Hackathon on the Saturday, which was fun but pretty exhausting!

The hackathon was pretty eye-opening. It was a great experience but I felt completely out of my depth all day. Watching people actually perform their craft is pretty daunting and I still have a long way to go! I hope it is organised again next year so I can see how far I’ve come.

So back to MA. Instead of racing ahead and starting week 3 material, I used Monday to do part of a Ruby course in Treehouse and try to cement whatever knowledge seemed to be in my brain. I got a few lightbulb moments, so I think it worked! I also did some remote code pairing which was great. Little bit nervous beforehand with the anticipation of chatting to someone new, but I think we both got a lot out of it and the time went far too quickly.

Challenge this week was to build a student directory. We had a set of instructions to follow, which was mostly fine except for one exercise which I know I completely over-thought and spent way too long over (4 hours!). I really enjoyed it though, can’t wait for more! I will admit to doing a ‘BOOM, mic drop’ on a few occasions, but it isn’t quite as effective when it is just you and your dining room table.

I tried to focus on using Vim to write commit messages and also writing good commit messages! Once I got into a rhythm of committing often, I could really see the benefits. When helping another student I was able to locate old code within a few minutes and fire it across. Felt like superwoman!

I think the kids have settled into this new routine as well as me. The house is far too quiet, but I look forward to picking them up at the end of each day. This isn’t a novel idea, but phones/laptops/devices are all off from pick-up to bedtime so we can focus fully on each other, getting dinner/shit done. This whole aspect of Makers was the part I was worried about the most, but I think we’ll survive, more than survive..thrive!