“I’m not going to go in today,” I told myself. I was 90% certain. I was confirming the decision with myself while putting contact solution on my toothbrush. 15 minutes after dancing back and forth, going in and out of the shower, I kept yelling at myself for being weak. “IS THAT ALL THAT YOU’RE MADE OF JULIUS? IS THAT REALLY ALL YOU GOT?” And I stomped my two feet down and said, “NO!” So I quickly showered, got ready, and headed out like a bawse in order to go another day at Dev Bootcamp!

Rspec

Today was finally the day that I would be writing my own rspec files. Ever since phase_0, the rspec files were always written for us, so all I had to do was run the files to make sure all the tests would pass. My pairing partner and I quickly got to work and git clone the repository that we would be working on. The first challenge was Bank Accounts; it was funny to see the class methods all written for you, but the rspec file was blank. As we dove into the material, a lot of the intimidating material of rspec seemed to follow English phrases in a grammatical sense; it felt like I was writing sentences for each of the method tests! And before you know it…one of the instructors ran the gong, meaning the morning was already over!

Today’s lecture

Today’s lecture seemed to have brought up a little bit of controversy among the Newts. On one hand, students loved the lecture. The argument was that learning how to code could be done for free, at the pleasure of your own home. Therefore, when they are at Dev Bootcamp, it is awesome to receive high level lectures that you wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. On the other hand, another group of students seemed overwhelmed by the intensity and level of the lecture and therefore couldn’t receive much out of it.

From my personal experience during the lectures, the material seemed a bit advanced. However, this is my own fault because of the lack of preparation and studying of Rails I did over the weekend. Even so, I was able to follow along fine during the lecture. However, 2.5 hours of lecture was indeed long and the students and I were obviously getting mentally exhausted from it.

What I am a little sad about is how there seems to be a lot of complaining happening at Dev Bootcamp these days. It’s to the point where I feel like feedback is a euphemism for complaining. All the points I hear are probably very valid points as well though. I guess it’s just that I would love to see just as many things that students love about Dev Bootcamp as with the things students may be unhappy about.

Lightning talk

But more than just wishing to see that, this made me think of how I could make the space a little better for students. I’ve been always trying to share my ideas of what students should be doing everyday at Dev Bootcamp in addition to setting up a blog to share their developer journies as well. I’m 80% sure that I will make an announcement at 2:00PM tomorrow to help out the other cohorts. And now, I just need to gather the courage to do so…