Week 11 & 12: London Trip & The End Of Teaching As We Know It!
I can’t believe we are here already!? At the start of the finish…and the finish is the beginning!
We are ready to embark on four weeks of our final project and then off into industry. The two weeks that preceded were not insignificant and as usual, were packed with tonnes of useful material and experiences. Thanks to our guest speakers Tracey from the Dept. for Transport and Jane from West Midlands Digital and IT, both talked about different aspects of the tech in the public sector. Also, big thanks Joe Trodden for the sequel, this time enlightening us about healthy conflicts and assertive inquiry, Faye from Vanti had a really insightful chat to us about people and inclusion in tech and lastly, but not least Luke Bennett, Customer Systems Development Manager from Bravissimo presented a thoroughly engaging and relevant talk about the Customer’s Needs and the developer’s true motivation for mastery, autonomy and purpose.
In Week 11 we had the delight of being invited to three giants in the tech industry, to tour around their offices, see how they operate and ask a bunch of questions. Huge thanks to everybody who invited us in and took time out of their days to talk to us from Facebook, Pivotal and Cancer Research UK!
What we learned this week:
- Teamwork
- How to accept feedback
- Agile methodologies
- React Hooks recapped
- Reducers
- Storybook for React component testing
- React.vis (a charting tool)
- Node Mailer
- Creating our testing framework
- Working in a team of 23 to create a client website
How I feel:
I feel anxious about the projects next week, and I feel like I need to wrap my head around the habit of Test Driven Development more, getting into the mindset of testing first. I think that there aren’t enough hours in the day to complete the loose strands that need to be tied up, strands like refining my LinkedIn profile, tightening the bolts on my portfolio website and adding the finishing touches to my CV. All things that need doing, but all things that also feel never-ending. It’s a lot to balance and add to that recapping new concepts and working on personal projects.
Where I’m at:
I feel like I understand the major topics covered in the course; there’s a lot of them though! Incorporating them into one another is going to take time and practice.
Where I want to be:
I want to prioritise red, green, refactor testing and React. I want to go into next week feeling energised and prepared, although can anyone ever do enough preparation, and at what point do preparations begin to drain energy?
Thanks for reading!
