Monday, December 30, 2013

19 School Days Left!

That hurts my head.   It feels like I just started, though, to be fair, in an 11-week course I suppose even the last day will feel like it is awfully close to the first.  

Quick sidebar:  this pace is starting to catch up with me and I'm taking Thera-flu like it's tasty or something, but it's what is keeping me upright at this point.  Forgiveness is requested for any typos/rambling sentences.

While the calendar proximity to the first day feels close, the knowledge proximity couldn't be further apart.  I don't step back often enough and evaluate where I am today compared to where I was on November 11th.  But, while knee-deep in Capybara testing today, my husband walked past my desk and saw 100% of my monitor real estate (and it's a 27" monitor!) taken up with Sublime and Terminal windows.  He said, in casual passing, "Do you really know what all of that means?".  I looked at my myriad of windows and replied, "Yeah.  And I wrote just about all of it".  He laughed, said 'cool' and went about his business.

But I was kind of frozen in my tracks.  I do understand it.  And I did write it.  and that, my friends, is pretty freaking cool.  

Dan Pickett, one of the founders of Launch Academy, wrote a great piece and published it on the Launch Academy website about Career Accelerators.  He discusses three phases of skill set development - dabbler, immersive and apprentice.  He pinpoints a moment, in the immersive phase, when a student can use documentation to arrive at a solution without handholding.  It is at this point where the knowledge acquisition goes from linear to exponential.  

I can confidently say I am there.  It feels like lots of things are on the upswing: confidence, ability & mental health.  My creativity is flowing, and I can finally get it out of my head, off of paper and into models, views and controllers.  Spirits are high, and each day brings a new discovery.  Dan points out, when you stop discovering, it's time to move on.  For now, there is still so much to still discover, but his point is taken.

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