Week 2 Update

Today ends my second week at Ada Developer's Academy. And I'll be honest ya'll: It was rough. I've gone at my own place for almost two years and in the span of these two weeks, I have easily spent at least 100 hours learning, studying and writing code. And the most frustrating part? Most of what I learned on my own was covered in the first week. So what does the mean for this week?

This week, I learned how to:

• Create my own classes, methods, instance variables, private methods and attr accessors
• Use Git to fork, clone, add, commit and push my files
• Utilize the terminal to access and open my files
• Use gems!
• Pair program
• Implement automated testing (???)

All this to say, I was super uncomfortable all this week. It was like clockwork. Our instructors would go over something new. They would over a practice problem. I would get hung up on a small thing, go off into a tangent and get side-tracked, then try to catch up to what was happening. The lesson would continue and I would try to keep up. By the time I start working on the follow-up assignment, I'm already lost and freaking out because I have no idea what's happening. Meanwhile, the sound of my peers typing code into their text editors only reminds me of the code I'm not writing. 

The problem with this feeling is that not only is it frustrating, but compounded by several instances of this in one day can feel crippling. I just learned a new concept. If I'm not able to implement it right away, I shouldn't be hard on myself because no one expects that of me. And everyone is struggling. There are days where I'm working on an assignment for hours and I have to force myself to stop. And although my work is no where near to where I want it to be, I did the best I could and for right now, that has to be enough.

 I am struggling because I'm learning something new and it has nothing to do with what I am capable of achieving. I'm pushing myself to learn new concepts and it can feel like I'm pushing my brain to its limits. It can make me doubt myself, but it can't take away what I have already achieved: I am here. I am learning alongside an amazing group of incredibly bright and supportive people who feel this same internal struggle. I don't have to be alone in this because I am definitely not alone. 

What to improve upon:

• Ask for help - reach out to my peers and my mentor/tutoring network more. 10 times more.
• Re-watch the recorded lectures when I'm confused 
• Stop doubting what I can do

Other thoughts:

• I'm always tired
• Coffee is my best friend
• Picking blackberries is a great way to end the day
• Sticky notes on my keyboard
• I am deliberate and afraid of nothing - Audre Lorde
• WHAT WOULD HERMIONE DO?

Something new is happening...

On Monday, two days from now, I begin classes at Ada Developer's Academy (ADA). While I cannot tell you how excited I am, I can tell you that I've looked at my acceptance email every week since April just to verify that I was accepted. This is despite the fact that I've been to study sessions and have been completing homework assignments for months. After a year and a half of teaching myself to code in my spare time, I get to be in a community of like-minded people who for whatever reason, decided to change up their career by going back to school for another year. It feels life-changing, but it also feels like my head is going to hurt a lot.

To backtrack for just a moment, ADA is a software developer school for women and non-binary people located here in lovely Seattle. It is named after the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace. Half of my year will be spent attending classes, the other half I will be interning with an engineering team at a tech company and preparing my final project. I'm definitely already contemplating project ideas.

One of the coolest things is that I get my own mentor who has decades of experience as an engineer. We met for the first time last week and it was such a impactful moment for me to be able to talk to someone in the industry about my goals during and after ADA. I talked about the Pokemon Go app and asked about how engineering teams are structured in a company. And I get that it may sound silly or random, but asking for advice/help from an engineer in real life or otherwise -- as someone who has been learning from online resources -- is intimidating. I've worried about appearing too novice, not knowing enough, and getting an answer that is way above my comprehension level that I turn red and run away. But having a mentor who believes in promoting diversity in the tech industry enough to offer his time, makes the process easier. I'm grateful to have someone on my team who can point me in the right direction and offer a point of view I normally wouldn't have access to. It makes the end goal of becoming an engineer that much more tangible.

I moved to Seattle in the hope of making a better life for myself than the one I left behind. It's been wonderful living in the Pacific Northwest, but it's also been incredibly hard working nightshift at an admin job for the past three years. For the first time in a long time, I get to dedicate my full-time occupation to one of my passions: coding. It's going to be amazing. I cannot wait.