Coding Dojo: Day 2

So apparently I saved it as a draft instead of posting it, but here is my post from yesterday.

Well, it's day two! The meeting yesterday went well. It was pretty basic orientation stuff. It seems that all the meetings are going to be via Skype with no video other than to see what's happening on out instructors screen. Not sure how I feel about that. I mean I get that it's good cause students don't have to buy webcams if their computer doesn't have it built in, but I was kind of planning on these meetings making up for my lost interactions. I don't know. Most of the time I am happy to be by myself, and I love my room. But I'm starting to feel like Rapunzel trapped in her tower. I need human interaction, and my mom isn't cutting it. Ah well, I'll figure something out. Onto my next concern...

We have group meetings twice a week, and one-on-one meetings twice a week. These one-on-one meetings only last half an hour. That means I'm only getting an hour a week working with my instructor on the things that I need to work on. Their program is well written, and I tend to be very self sufficient so I may not need more than that. Still, I am trying to use this to launch a career so I find the lack of face time with my instructor even though it's an online program to be concerning to say the least.

But like I said, their program is very well set up. I got through all of the current reading on CSS, so now I've moved onto the assignments. They involve writing out the source html and CSS code of images of websites. The html takes me 5-10 minutes. I've worked with html a long time and it's pretty straight forward so that part is easy. The CSS takes a lot longer. I have worked with CSS quite a bit in the past, but it wasn't taught well, and I would often end up with a really convoluted code to get the output I wanted. Trying to write things properly and still get them where I want them is proving to be more challenging. Anyway, I should get back to work.

Coding Dojo: Day 1

The day is finally here. The day my session officially starts. I finished all the beginning HTML work and am now on to CSS. I probably should have been able to get through all the CSS reading rather quickly, but reading all about CSS is excruciatingly tedious. (At least to me.) Especially considering the fact that I've already read all of this information in various forms when I have had to for other programs. The reading is quite simple, but I'm having trouble making myself focus on it. My mind keeps skipping over large amounts of it, and then I have to go back, and reread. I am determined however to read it the way they explain it so that I know I fully grasp the concepts the way they want me to. I am excited for when I get through the reading though. Then, after the quiz, I can get to the assignment. Despite my aversion to reading about it, I love writing CSS. So that is helping to motivate me to get through the reading.

I have a skype meeting in an hour for my orientation. I'm excited for that, and for getting to talk to my instructor. For now though, I think I'm going to take a lunch break. My parents brought me Olive Garden for my first day :)

One more day...

Well, my session at Coding Dojo starts tomorrow! Saying that I am super excited is an understatement. I have been working towards this ever since I left WSU a year ago. I've had a few setbacks along the way, but now I am here. It's going to be an amazing experience and jump start my career. I will admit though... A tiny bit of me is kind of dreading it. They say that their most successful students put in 90-95 hours a week. I intend to be one of those students. But that means if I take a day off a week, which they recommend, I will have to put in 15-16 hour days. Gross I know, but I'll be doing something I care about so I think I'll enjoy it. The problem lies in the fact that I won't have time to do anything else I enjoy; hang out with my friends, ski, play Magic, etc. That will be hard for me, but I know it will be worth it, and doing this program will open a lot of doors for me that are currently bolted shut. Anyway, I should go. I'm trying to get Netflix out of my system by getting one last good marathon in before tomorrow!!