“Oh my goodness! School tomorrow!!!” I yelled inside my head. I felt like a twelve year old again with my new backpack I bought for myself, a new Macbook Air laptop to bring so I don’t have to discuss the windows desktop I have at home, and a very eager mind to venture a new chapter of my life. I went to bed early to make sure I wake up early and refreshed: a feat I wasn’t able to accomplish since the hazy, summer weather began.

I woke up at 6:00AM the next morning and woke up like it was Christmas morning. I quickly showered and skipped breakfast; an e-mail sent to me by the head instructor of DBC NYC stated that breakfast would be served in the morning. The e-mail also stated that I should be at the lobby by 8:40AM. I quickly calculated that it would take a good 15 minutes to cross the bridge, take another 10 minutes to wait for the A train down, 45 minutes for the train to take me to my station, and another 10 minutes to walk over to 48 Wall St. I quickly calculated with my super math skills that I should leave my house by 7:20AM latest; I left at 7:00AM.

I easily found my way over to the building by 8:20AM. I recognized faces from seeing avatars and played a little game with myself to match the avatars with the faces of fellow students walking in. By 8:55AM, my fellow cohort members and I were all outside the door and we hear a bunch of cheering and yelling. I thought to myself, “Oh, I wonder what’s going on in there!” Suddenly, the door swings open and I see the senior cohorts all lined up to the left and ride of the door. “YEAHHHHHHHHHHH!” “WHOOOOOOOO!” One by one, each of my cohort members and I walk down and give/receive high fives until the end of the line. For some reason, it felt amazing!

We all circle up after and each student/instructor introduced himself/herself. Each person had to state his/her name, where they’re from, why they chose DBC, and one quirky thing. I thought long and hard about what quirky thing I would tell everyone while each student was introducing himself/herself.

Hello! My name is Julius Jung. I am currently living right across the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey. I chose DBC because more than the coding I will learn, I love how the curriculum closely ties in with emotional intelligence. And this is something that I personally hold dear to heart and hope to learn to be more aware of my emotions.

“I think I did well,” I thought to myself. As the introductions were coming closer to ending, I can see how anxious students were getting because of the breakfast that was going to be served after. The lion living in my stomach was also getting very anxious, grumbling ever so softly now and then.

When the time came, I grabbed breakfast and sat down with fellow cohort members and talked about phase_0’s curriculum. Each person had their own story about how they tackled the challenges. One person had a wedding to go to, so completed the challenges early. Another person had to move from California, so had to submit the challenges a little late. I contributed to the conversation and said how difficult Javascript was for me.

After breakfast, my cohort, the Red-Spotted Newts, all got together in a room and did some exercises that exposed how each, one of us work when working with a group. I don’t want to spoil it for future cohorts so I won’t go much into detail. After the fun exercise, the instructor asked us to think about which one of the three characteristics best fit us: integrity, effort, kindness. I thought about it for a minute and decided that integrity fit me the most. I want to be the type of person that stays true to myself no matter what external forces attempt me to change otherwise. In addition, I think that being honest with yourself and to others is well respected. We were then told to find other students with different traits to group up to have all three characteristics within the group. We were told that if we were running late, or we can’t come in for whatever reasons, to tell the other members of the group.

The next couple of hours seemed to fly by. A couple of fellow cohort members and I were grouped up with senior cohort members and we all talked about ourselves: our fears, ambitions, and questions. Lunch was provided after (nomnomnom), and the introduction session was finally coming to a close. It was time to code.

My fellow cohort members and I huddled together and listened to the instructor telling us what our challenges were for the rest of the day. I paired up with a wonderful student, and we quickly dove right into the challenge:

• Convert Arabic numerals to Roman
• Convert an integer to its English equivalent.

My partner and I started at 2:00PM, and I started to get confused when students were already leaving. I check my watch. “WHAAAT? IT’S 6:20PM?” The fine, sands of time was quickly slipping through my fingers. “WHAAAT? IT’S 8:15PM?” I can assure you that some sort of sorcery was happening in the confinements of the 15th floor of 48 Wall St. I told my partner that I was honestly starting to zone out, and any more coding that would be done at this point would just be a waste of time. My partner agreed, so we wrapped things up and called it a day.

I say my farewells, and I start walking back to the train station to ride the A train back up. Unfortunately for me, the George Washington Bridge decided to close all but one lane due to construction. This delayed me a good 30 minutes to get back home. I turn on my desktop to review the challenges I have completed for the day. I also take my vitamins, put shorts in my backpack just in case I forget that I have mandatory yoga at DBC the next morning, and tuck myself in to sleep so I can head back to DBC to gladly do it all over again.