42 Piscine Day 15 — (10)

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

Yesterday started in exactly the way I do not want a day to begin, with a woman angry at me. My group project was probably the most dysfunctional group I’ve ever worked in. One of the members refused to help and I think dropped out in the middle of it. The other one informed me she would be unavailable to help because she’s attending a conference, then cancelled her second day of the conference to be available but still didn’t actually help. She tells me she is a VP of marketing for a startup, but I find that unlikely as she is one of the hardest people to communicate with effectively. So that’s what happened, I was stuck with a project alone for half the time, then the second half of the time I had someone who was trying to cheer me on but still not actually helping. It went about how you would expect, we didn’t finish on time. I told her I would upload to github so if anyone goes through our code they see we did something (maybe it will soften perspective) but that I wouldn’t get it graded as there are no partial credits here and so it’s a failing grade. We have to pay points to get things graded, group projects cost 3 points, an expensive project and these points don’t go back into the pool, of which there is starting to be a shortage now that a lot of people have quit.

I stand by my decision to not have an incomplete and failing project graded, it would be a waste of time for everyone, a waste of resources and frankly I don’t think they would use it as a teaching moment. She noticed I had thrown in the towel on the project, declining the chance to have it graded, and she was upset. She thought that having them see our work and commenting on it mattered more than the grade, she had misunderstood when I told her I wouldn’t have it graded and was upset that I had done so without talking to her first (except I did). I apologized, she was still upset, there was nothing to be done really, the grade is unchanged either way. My friend who sits next to me was mad for me though saying things like “she didn’t even put in any work into this, she has no right to be mad about not getting graded for work she didn’t do” and he may have a point. We later had a good laugh about something she said though “we will be graded on how well we worked as a team and worked together” I just shook my head, because no, this was the most dysfunctional team I’ve worked on in my life, even the ones where I’ve been stuck doing all the work, at least we sort of communicated ok, this didn’t even have that.

So I spent a good chunk of the morning trying to calm down. It seems procrastination and inability to focus are more about emotional control/flow than anything else. I’m one that has always felt feelings very deeply so this has been a lifelong struggle. I didn’t get much done all morning, I tried, I watched videos to understand the assignment, and other related videos to get a grasp of what’s going on. Then after lunch I took a quick nap, because I was still struggling to calm myself. Afterward, my friends and I decided to take a few hours off if we could get a certain amount of the daily project done, so we went and saw a movie at a theater. I needed it, I was all kinds of stressed, I feel a lot better now.

There are only 3 more days of projects left, one group project, then one very large project, one more test and of course the final. We are more done than not. My headcount yesterday was in the ballpark of 40. I feel that a lot of people took yesterday off as it was labor day, but also I think a lot of people quit just before exam02 and right after it, I think group project02 sent a lot of people home as well.

Another thing yesterday is I found out one of our students is actually a recruiter here to plant seeds of people to find later. She is also here to learn how the program is set up and designed so that her organization can emulate it some and perhaps improve on the model. After talking to some of my friends about it I guess this isn’t completely uncommon practice. I find the whole thing fascinating and in some ways that would be a dream job for me, to go places, learn things, meet people and try to find the talented ones, perhaps I’ll look into something like that.

I also finally bought my plane ticket back and let my boss know when I’ll be ready to work again. Since I’m going back it may be worth it to stay more than just a month back at the job, so if I have to take a second piscine, perhaps the one in October isn’t timed quite right. In a perfect world I won’t have to take a second one, but I know where my skills are currently, and I might. So perhaps November or January then. But I had hoped to start my semester(for lack of a better word) as a cadet in November, if wishes were fishes.

The assignment yesterday was about Makefiles, if you understand this well you can get through the assignments. It was a somewhat easier day than the last week, I was grateful to actually be able to turn something in, I still had to learn it mind you, but it wasn’t building on top of concepts I had missed as much as the assignments of week2.