Failing forward.
First things first. I earned a black belt in my first full-stack at Coding Dojo, Python!
Basically this means that not only did I pass the exam (which is essentially re-creating a specific website in 4.5 hours using the language and server you learned during your stack, followed by successfully deploying it), but that I also “mastered” the material, earning a score between 9.5–10 on my exam. Red belts are also awarded to students who pass the exam with a score of at least 8–9.4. To continue through the program, and move into the next stack, C# / .NET core, we had to at least earn a red belt on the Python exam.
Don’t be fooled though, I took this exam 3 times to finally pass at all. As Python is the first full-stack students at Coding Dojo learn, it’s often one of the hardest. We’re expected to not only learn a new language and syntax in 3 weeks, but also how to work with multiple compatible servers, create databases, query the databases remotely, and utilize difficult validations. It’s not easy, but it is doable.
The first stab at this exam was Friday, February 23rd. There are 7 different versions of each stack exam available to students, knowing that most will take the exam more than once. Our instructor, Ryan, gave us the challenge of tackling the most difficult version of the exam first. Knowing full well most of the students would fail. Which we did. Thanks, Ryan..
But all kidding aside, the lesson here was clear and valuable. Things break. You forget a comma that destroys your site. You have to delete your entire database mid-exam because that COULD be the issue but you’re still not really 100% sure if it actually is the reason things aren’t working. It’s not easy, it takes a lot of research, practice, critical thinking, and scouring Google. But you can’t just hit the wall, give up, and convince yourself you haven’t come as far as you truly have. He wanted us to learn to scale the wall, not just meet it and turn around because we didn’t have a ladder. We were forced to learn from our mistakes and “fail forward”. After most of us failed the exam, we had to untuck our tails from between our legs, and fix it. Which takes an entire day sometimes, just to get something as seemingly simple as a time or date validation to work. But we did it, and then we’d take the exam again.
And sometimes you fail that one too.
You are .25 away from passing, and you’re pissed. You’re annoyed with yourself, your annoyed with the material, you’re annoyed that you couldn’t write your query correctly. And you go through the whole song and dance again. Fix the exam, learn from your mistakes, and then try once more.
Finally, after 13.5 hours of testing over a period of 5 days, I passed the exam. I’ve never been so proud, relieved, and happy. (OK, maybe when I got into UF, but not since then.)
I never thought failing an exam could teach me so much. I didn’t realize how I’d be learning so much more than just how to write code, but about life and myself through this whole experience.
The past 6 weeks have been some of the hardest, best, exhausting, exhilarating, and insightful weeks of my life and I can’t wait to take on the next 8.
Anyways, more pictures and bucket list things below!
P.S. If you want to actually visit the mini site I built, type “18.219.247.100” , without the “www.” and “.com”(looking at you, mom and dad) into your browser. It’s a faux- trip planner. I promise I don’t have all these trips planned above.
