Welcome back to my blog, I haven’t said this before but I truly appreciate you taking a few minutes of your time to follow my journey into my new career. Being able to discuss my journey with others, really helps me and for those that have supported me emotionally, financially and physically I cannot thank you enough.
It’s Sunday of Week 1 of my pre-course at Makers Academy and I am feeling pretty accomplished, but it hasn’t been a simple week. The pre-course is a self learning module, no instructor lead sessions and all the work is marked by surprise surprise, computer code.
This is some serious self-led learning, if you don’t complete the work on time you wont be able to continue onto the main full time taught course — its on your own back to move onto the next stage, if not, you’re slamming the door on yourself.
Mondays are a heavy day for me a full working day and then some working studying. I’ve done this to front load my work and try and stay ahead of my deadlines. Well Monday was an ordeal — I have been so excited to get started that when our instructions for the next four weeks dropped at 11am, you would think I would be head down and focused.
But no, not me, I was distracted by EVERYTHING. I swear I would have told you you were breathing too loudly — completely not in the zone! It took me a whole 7 hours to force myself through the first Chapter of study — did I take anything in, who knows, but by the end of the day I was seriously considering why I had chosen to take this path and was it all a big mistake?
I retired early from my desk and vowed that tomorrow was a new day, had some great pep talks from a few friends and I still had 6 days to pull this weeks work together — I also prayed, alot…
Tuesday came and my study plan was a full morning session before I had to get on with the rest of the day. Fortunately for me, my study loan and the future of this blog things were a little easier. I took the pressure off myself and took a slow and steady approach.
I concluded, I do not like the study material style of the pre course, which leads to a lack of concentration and then frustration and some serious negative self talk. But as I said before there is so much quality materials out there that all teach similar things, I needed to not let this spiral me out of control.
I finished the chapter in half the time of Monday — big win and closed my laptop for the day, or so I thought. This weeks tasks were two chapters and an assignment. Once I reached home around 6, I sat back at my desk and decided to give the assignment a go….
It was a murder mystery assignment, using the skills I had acquired this week (ergo the last 24 hours) to find out the suspect of this Murder. It was made up of 10 consecutive steps and if you got a green tick at the end, you had successfully followed all of the instructions meticulously.
Step 1, complete. Step 2, complete, Step 3, complete — cue some self belief creeping in, maybe this course wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Step 4, complete, Step 5, complete, Step 6 — I have no idea what i’m doing — but thats ok.
I had breezed through the first 5 steps in around an hour, with a couple of small stumbles (mostly me not reading the instructions properly) and had reached my first major road block. One thing that is encouraged is excessive use of google, the answer is out there somewhere you just have to be smart enough to work through the whole internet to find it.
I lucked out with a Youtube video series focusing solely on the method I didn’t understand. Applied my learning to Step 6, boom, Complete! I can’t say I breezed through the next 3 stages but it really was a lesson perseverance and I think I was becoming a little addicted to this coding lark.
By about 11pm I was ready to push my work to the online repository (github) where I would see if I had actually completed it correctly or was I about to get a giant error message.
BINGO! I had actually done it correctly — it felt like one of those drunken nights where you make it back home but you have no idea how you got there — I had no idea how I had got it right but I had. Buzzing was an understatement! Added bonus, to my surprise I was the first one to do it too! (Not that it’s a competition but that was definitely an extra confidence boost!)
The sense of relief was actually indescribable, after the nightmare day on Monday, I really needed this. It may have only been the first week task, and things were about to get a lot harder, but one step at a time has never felt more apt.
Again my thanks goes to all of you for supporting me and if you would like to support my soon to be unemployed self further you can contribute on my Buy Me a Coffee page here.
Software and Soca
Today’s Soca recommendation is less related to what I have been up to more what has fuelled me this week. Last Sunday Teddyson John released a live acoustic album Caribbean Moscato. I am a sucker for a live band at the best of times, but this had me singing, dancing, crying, laughing, feeling happy and sad all in his 42 minute collection. If you take anything from todays blog, go watch this it is INCREDIBLE!
