Wednesdays are solo optional days at DBC. I think it’s good to solo on Wednesdays because all the other days you are at DBC, are you pairing with a partner. If you don’t know something, or if you’re stuck at a challenge, you always have your partner to fall back on.

This style may create dependency on pairing with a partner to write and understand code. In order to make sure that doesn’t happen, I make sure I complete the challenges by myself on Wednesdays to make sure I truly understand the material being covered.

One thing a friend and I saw today was how much research goes into understanding a new topic. I didn’t know a lot of the material for today, so I spent a lot of time researching and understanding the topics necessary. Of course during this time, no code is being written. Therefore, by the end of today, I didn’t come out of DBC with any code. I only thing I took from today was a shaky understanding of certain Ruby classes and how to implement them. This creates the feeling of not wanting to struggle with the material and seek other people’s answers, or even refer to an instructor whenever they are available.

After lunch, I decided to sign up for a counseling session. The counseler exceeded my expectations and just seems like an awesome person! However, I have never felt so unguarded in my life. Personally, I try to have this large bubble around me at all times to prevent people from getting too close to me. I’m just the type of person that likes to keep to myself. However, the counseler gave me really good advice that I tried to actually put to action today. I will definitely follow up with the counseler next Wednesday.

Wednesdays are also ‘Engineering Empathy’ days. Most of the students weren’t looking forward to it because the students felt like they weren’t able to take much from last week’s class. However, the students and I all thought wrong. For 2.5 hours, we learned about the ego, superego, and the ID and the relationship between the three. You can read more about what I think about them HEREEEEEEEEEEE.

After the lecture, we each paired up with a partner and practiced stating what our superego was stating. A lot of students were really honest and shared their feelings with the cohort. I did my best to participate as well and truly share what I was thinking without applying a filter to the words that were spewing out of my mouth.

This was very hard for me to do because I am a very reserved person. I don’t like sharing anything about myself, and like to keep to myself. It was no easy task to come out of this comfort zone I’ve been in for many years. However, I want to better myself intellectually by learning how to code, and also emotionally with these ‘EE’ sessions.

Unfortunately for me, this Friday is the 4th of July. This means that there is no class on Friday. This is the first time in my life where I feel very uncomfortable having a holiday. I NEED and WANT to have class this Friday!?! I will probably feel very anxious the whole day, wondering if I am able to catch up to the current material being taught thus far.

Despite feeling that I am overwhelmed with work and tired, I have never been happier coding everyday!