The weekend was unproductive. VT, a friend from high school, and I were out for most of Friday night and I slept in on most of Saturday afternoon. By the time I woke up and I had to meet a college friend for a concert he had invited me to. We drove about an hour to Concord for it and waited in traffic to get close enough to the pavilion only to be told by an officer that parking was full and we had to turn around to drive to Cal State East Bay to take a shuttle to get in. The concert had already started and it would have taken us an extra hour to get in and in our frustration we decided that it wasn't worth it any longer, so we headed back. We got some burgers and watched a movie at another friend's house that night.
Sunday came around and I came into the dojo for some work. My goal was to complete the Mongoose chapter. I figured that I won't catch up to the Angular material for Monday but it would have been close enough at least. That turned out to be a complete failure. VT and I were the only ones there all day and we worked together to speed through it and maybe make it to the next chapter. However neither of us got passed the first Mongoose assignment, which was to set up a database for storing user names and their quotes. I would have settled for completing just that before going home but we seriously couldn't tell what went wrong with our code. He resorted to reading material from outside the coursework and I just sat there staring at my screen, fighting the stress and feeling of hopelessness. He was determined to stay all night if he had to to get this assignment done but by 11PM I told him that I was done for the day. He criticized my dedication but I didn't care. I was out of it and was not looking forward to the next day. I felt bad for leaving him there to look for the answers by himself but if I stayed I wouldn't have done anything either way.
I slipped into bed and dreamt a dreamless sleep, which is the recurring pattern these nights. Imagine, I am so tired that I don't even dream any more. I stare at screens all day, I don't eat healthy any more, and I stopped my usual exercise routine; a cocktail for strange physiological effects.
This morning I woke up to a quite and dead home. There was an ant infestation in the kitchen and cooking breakfast had lost its appeal. I decided to pick up some breakfast at Safeway on my way to the Dojo and eat it there. On the plus side I was leaving home half-an-hour earlier than usual and I figure that I would beat traffic and make it to the Dojo with enough time to eat my breakfast in no hurry. Turns out that traffic is much heavier that earlier in the day and all that extra time I gave myself was spent standing still a little longer. By the time I picked up my breakfast at Safeway and got to the dojo the lecture had already began. Whenever I complain about traffic the usual response I get is to leave the house earlier. I'm sure I'm not the only person who complains about that and were told the same advice. Ironically this means that the earlier hours are just as clogged as the later hours. I bet if I open my mouth about this problem to anybody again they'll just tell me to leave the house earlier. I wonder if there will ever be a better solution to this problem.
So my morning got off to another rough start. After lectures we were sent off to begin the Angular chapter. Several of my classmates have already completed the Mongoose chapter so I asked two classmates for help on the assignment from the previous day and in five minutes they did what I struggled for five hours to do. A pile of weights were removed from my shoulders. Everything made a little more sense. I felt better. I got my motor running again.
The first assignment within an hour and I even had time to set up form validations for each name and quote entry. I could see a little CodeIgniter in this setup. Nice.
I thought about doing the rest of the Mongoose chapter that day but the instructor said that we needed to complete the Angular material within the next two days and if we're not done with the previous materials then we should just move forward regardless. I didn't want to initially but I needed to play catch up so I swallowed my pride and began my introduction to Angular. A good chunk of us had to do that as well.
Angular is a front-end framework for the MEAN stack. Nodes controls the runtime while Express operates the server but the data and all the products arrive on the front page in Angular format. It didn't make complete sense to me when I first heard about it, and it still doesn't now, but from the lecture assignments I followed it automates many common tasks like listing and searching without refreshing the page or hitting the "enter" key.
I spent the day reading the materials and doing sample problems. In the afternoon VT mentioned a hackathon in SF for that weekend and he suggested that I participate in since it will mean more exposure to the materials we're covering. I refused initially cause I usually spend the weekends catching up but after chewing it over I decided to participate. I need more exposure, which will pay off with future assignments, and I am always down for a trip to SF, especially if it means spending the night there.
Evening came and the first assignment came with it. I wanted to start it but I was feeling pretty edgy by then as a result of the stress. I needed to exercise. So I left early to go home and run a few laps around the area. It wasn't what I'm normally accustomed to but I needed it anyway. I'm ending the day a little better than I felt in the morning, with a renewed excitement for the following day. Bring it on.
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