42 Piscine day 10 — (07)

Edit: This is part of a series that culminated here, Next post. Previous post.

Edit2: I consolidated all the posts of the piscine daily posts here

Edit3: You can read up about what it’s like as a cadet at 42 here

We had our group project (rush00) graded today. I was prepared enough to answer most questions and explain the program, my partner managed to answer all bonus questions. We got 125% credit, well done and all. But I walked away from it feeling really dumb. I didn’t know the answers to most of the bonus questions, and some of them I really should have, as I’ve looked them up and explained them to others even. Seems it was a bit of performance anxiety.

I’m struggling, I feel constantly left behind, like my understanding stopped at day 8 and we are two days past that. I’m not sure how to catch up, I’m not sure I can. I got two of tonights 5 assignments done tonight, but those I had to ask for help, and I don’t feel like I fully understand. I glanced at some github code of the next assignment hoping it would spark an idea of how it works, but I’ve got nothing, so there is nothing to turn in. I’ve still got about two hours till the deadline, but it’s not going to happen.

I’ve been really distracted lately with feelings of loneliness and worrying about some of my personal relationships back home, a best friend who isn’t on the best of terms at the moment because of feelings and poor choices. Memories of failed relationships of the past trigged by a girl who works at hacking house looking very similar to my ex fiance. Another girl here with a personality similar to another ex, and a third who should have statues modeled after her. I just want to focus on the task at hand, these old emotions aren’t serving anything here, they are not problems to be solved, just distractions when I need them least.

Tonight we were supposed to get a group together to get ice cream, there was a poor showing of wanting to come, mostly me. The girl putting it together canceled, this only furthered said lonely feelings.

One of my roommates is headed home, he was in the middle of arranging housing for a friend of his who isn’t 18 yet, which seems to have special implications in getting housing in West Virginia, I didn’t push to understand. We also had a student kicked out for trying to fight the security guard when asked where his wristband was, why the hell would your reaction be to fight the guy, would you fight the cops if they called you out on something? I mean that never ends well. Third one of my better friends here is thinking about leaving as well, but her reasons seem shallow at best, at least the reasons she is presenting are shallow, perhaps there are more hidden ones that aren’t being expressed. Hard to say. Most of us tried to convince her to stay, I didn’t push as she isn’t one that would appreciate it, but other people less close really tried to reason with her.

My count of students for the day was about 114 people at 6 pm.

I’m on the cusp of being level 1, but I feel more lost than ever, I don’t quite understand what we are learning now and haven’t for days. The class seems split into quarters as far as understanding. The very smart people most of whom have coded for a year before are keeping up and doing the majority of assignments. Upper middle (like myself) have felt lost for a few days but are working to keep up with it understanding bits and pieces as we go but not getting much turned in. Lower middle is understanding how to code but have felt like 4 days behind the entire time, and the lower feel completely frustrated and have the entire time. There is a part of me I’ve neglected for some years but it’s there still the same, I’m actually a competitive person, and it is frustrating to have so much that I don’t understand, but then more so to see it come so easily to others, even if they are a minority. This is a part of me I’m not sure what to do with, as it’s been neglected so long I don’t remember how to manage it. I don’t feel like I have time for jealousy right now though, things need doing after all.

I want to go to this school, but I wonder if I’m struggling as much as I am right now, and struggling to find answers on my own, I wonder if I would actually cut it once I did get in. My friend thinking of quitting has only further reinforced those doubts. Perhaps when we were trying to convince her to stay we were giving ourselves reasons more than her. The staff is trying to talk to her as well, I hope it helps.

I still haven’t talked to a RA about switching rooms, mostly for lack of time. My sinuses haven’t been as bad lately, I think they’ve been smoking less, it might be less of an issue now.

Assignments for day 7 are as follows.

1. clone strdup
2. a function that returns an array of ints between min and max
3. same as above but more
4. function to transform arguments given as commands into a string
5. splits a string of characters into words using spaces, tabs and line breaks
6. display the content of the array you created in last function
7. result of the conversion of the string nbr from a base_from to base_to
8. splits a string of characters