42 Piscine Day 14 — (Match N Match)

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

I am a man defeated.

I’m about 75% sure I’m going to need to take the piscine a second time. I’ve not retained much this last week and have genuinely felt overwhelmed since day 6. I had come to the conclusion that the tests mattered most of all but discovered today that may not be the case. If you pass the tests but haven’t turned in anything that is still enough not to get in. I guess balance is what is really needed. Despite my best efforts to complete assignments I don’t fully understand, and learning while I struggle through it, many were not turned in due to the fact that they were not completed, which was probably a mistake. So I may have to take it again because I’m not sure I can catch up on my own, the time just isn’t there.

I read some of the only other blog about the piscine experience I’ve found and she was getting high marks on everything, it just made me feel a little bit dumber as that has not been the case for me. I can’t believe that anyone is retaining much more than I am if they are coming from a background without coding experience. I know they don’t expect you to be an expert at the end of the piscine, and from what I understand are somewhat forgiving in that area but still the only real solid requirement I’ve seen is to get more than 25% on the final, the rest are reasons to veto(you know, not playing well with others, being a dick etc), but that seems to be the hard and fast rule is the score of the final (there is a story of one exception but I think hers was a computer error and she should have scored much higher).

I’ve felt some more solidarity/inclusion today, several people have helped me with my projects today. I still didn’t finish, but I did learn a lot and it was nice to feel remembered for lack of a better word. While doing laundry one of the cadets was really friendly and gave some pointers on getting more work done. Another girl here tried to help me find people to help me figure things out as well, which was appreciated.

One of my better friends decided to leave, we had thought we had talked her out of it before, but there it is, this is mostly for reasons to do with depression. I’m glad she stayed and passed the second exam though, proud of her for that, for not quitting because it was hard, she still quit but now for a much better reason and I really respect that.

I didn’t finish the group project, the one girl who was at a conference stayed to make time to work on stuff and the other one that sort of refused to help later told me she was leaving and I think she meant the school. I know of at least 6 people that left today. I think we are less than 100 now. My headcount tonight at 7pm was 71. I feel terrible that we didn’t finish after my teammate made time, she was leaving most of the code to me but giving ideas here and there but I was struggling as I’ve been working on it all day, my brain was mush. We really just didn’t know enough to finish it in time, perhaps if we had both days to work on it together we might have pulled it off.

The solo project for the weekend was match n match. Basically we had to compare two strings and if they were similar enough to fill in the data, think about it as a precursor to an auto fill or a spell check. It took a lot of pointers and recursion, both areas I’m sort of struggling with.

Spirits seem mostly low today, but I feel there is also a deeper level of camaraderie forming too. It’s been an experience, and I’ve learned more about coding in two weeks than I ever have in my years of trying to learn. It’s crazy to think that we are half done. Actually more than half. This next week will probably destroy me mentally, tomorrow we will find out.

Until tomorrow then.