Makers Day 1/60
Originally published in April 2017.
Makers Academy day 1 of 60 (not counting weekends) is finished. It’s 8:45pm and I am in bed absolutely exhausted and very happy.
We had orientation this morning, learning about how MA functions. It was great to see their intelligent approach to learning and even better to hear from Dana, our Chief Joy Officer (meditation/yoga/life coach). I’m so glad MA encourages us to take care of ourselves!
Then I had a fantastic Alexander technique lesson over lunch, which really helped with some left shoulder issues I’ve been having.
And finally, spent 4.5 hours pair programming. It was an intense experience! Learning to work in close proximity with another human being is always a learning curve but years of playing chamber music have really helped to train me in listening and communicating. We both thought our pair session went really well, we had a good feedback session, and are going to chat on Slack tomorrow morning about what we learned.
The actual coding itself was pretty easy, which is good — the focus was on learning to pair effectively. Am looking forward to some deeper coding challenges!
As soon as we hit 6pm my brain just shut off. While I wanted to do another 5 hours and totally finish the week’s challenges on day 1 (afternoon 1 even!) all of the sudden none of the words on the page made any sense to me so I had to call quits on the session :) .
I then went on a walk for an hour to appease the FitBit gods (while chatting on the phone to a friend, conveniently), came home and ate bacon and porridge for dinner (yum!) and now am struggling to stay awake till 9pm.
So what have I learned from today?
— I need to read instructions, code, and error messages slowly. I read far too quickly and get away with it a lot, but what’s the rush? Where’s the race? Better to do it slower and more mindfully. Hm, mindful code reading…
- I am very much eyes on the prize — complete the challenge the recommended way before finding other ways to do it. I do think this approach is borne out by Bloom’s Taxonomy — master the apply stage before moving on to the analyze stage.
- I really can’t sit still. In 4.5 hours of pairing (including breaks), I moved from the desk to the floor to lying on the floor (not great for typing but ok for navigating), back to sitting on the floor and ended up at the desk again. I apologise to everyone I am pairing with that I will be roving around.
- I need to wear more comfortable shoes when walking.
Bye for now!
