Today we are officially 25% of the way finished. This reminds me of running the mile in high school. I was a chubby kid growing up, so the only thing for me worse than running a mile was having to attempt pull-ups in the middle of gym class. One lap around the running track was a quarter mile, so 4 laps around the track was a mile. I remember being able to run the first lap, getting tired and then realizing I had to do that three more times. Inevitably I couldn't run 3 more laps and would usually just walk, jog, sprint for a few seconds, then walk, stop for a bit, jog, walk and finally cross the finish line about 10 minutes later. That level of exhaustion is close to what I'm feeling these days.
I don't have any problems getting sleep, except for when there is too much homework to do. This weekend there are a few fun events in town that I'd like to go check out. But I'll be working on my group assignment via Github. I feel pretty lucky to be getting so much exposure to Github so early on in my studies, especially since there are so many horror stories of people not being able to grasp the concepts. Getting a job and building my skills are my two goals right out of bootcamp and knowing Github is crucial to achieving both.
As a bit of motivation for us tired souls we were allowed to visit a tech firm here in town. They put on a presentation for us about what they do, what we would be expected to do as junior devs, treated us to lunch and helped us through our projects while we studied in their space. It was a very different work environment than what I am used to. I've never seen that level of cooperation in the hospitality industry. I've never seen an entire group of people, working for a large firm, willing to put down their big projects and help us little guys get a grasp of some pretty challenging concepts. Very different people who all seemed to enjoy working together, not just for the money, but for the challenge of learning new things and creating awesome stuff.
That's the kind of environment that I want.
There was a lot of positive reinforcement too. Everybody knows that learning programming is difficult. Everybody knows that I am currently spending about 90% of my time on the internet looking up answers, and when I am working in the industry I'll still be on the internet looking up answers because its that damn hard. Everybody knows that impostor syndrome is a huge deal for us. So its nice to be around a bunch of people who can look us in the eye and say, "We know what you are going through. Everything will be fine."
Tomorrow is Demo Day, where programmers and hobbyists in Vegas get together and show off the cool things they are working on. Its my first Demo Day after starting bootcamp. Not that I'll be presenting anything yet, just that now I can have a better appreciation for the people who are going to stand in front of the attendees and present. Because now I have a much better idea of how many hours upon hours they had to study and research, stress and lose sleep and start all over again, just to get to that moment.
