Week 7

In order to excel, you must be completely dedicated to your chosen sport. You must also be prepared to work hard and be willing to accept constructive criticism. Without one-hundred percent dedication, you won’t be able to do this. — Willie Mays

This week has been phenomenal. In class, we did a lot of work making full scale applications in React. I learned a lot, but the real growth for me this weekend was out of the classroom. Myself and a team of four other classmates worked on a week-long hackathon and put together a web app helping veterans.

The link to the prototype is here, and I’m super proud of it. That’s me presenting the video! The hackathon was put on by Tech for Justice and had Houston, Chicago, and virtual participation.

I played the part of “project manager”, owning the master git branch and managing pull requests and merge conflicts. We pulled a couple all nighters and got it done a few hours before the deadline.

I met a lot of people both in and out of the technology industry and learned how to work with a variety of personality types in order to achieve a common goal. I became a git workflow master. I learned how to research. I learned how to manage deadlines. I learned how to write an API. I learned about database management. I learned how to work on 4 hours sleep. And I learned that I loved all of it.

It’s Friday, and the presentations and awards ceremony takes place tonight. We’re going to have a small celebration lunch and reflect on the work we’ve done, then head up as a group and spend the evening watching the presentations.

It’s crazy that 7 weeks ago I was learning for loops, and today I’m presenting a full blown app at a hackathon event. Then I’m going to sleep before beginning the weekend project!

/* Eight bytes walk into a bar. The bartender asks, “Can I get you anything?”

“Yeah,” reply the bytes. “Make us a double.” */