devANDflair

Whew! Here we are with another blog post and a CLI gem project completed. It has been a roller coaster of emotions, health, and personal issues, however, I have somehow managed to make it out onto the other side not only as a better person but a stronger developer. 

As part of The Flatiron School’s curriculum after a project is submitted, you are to go through a code review by someone on staff. During this process, a series of questions are asked about the project and fundamental components of the lessons that were covered before the project. After the questions and live demo are completed with satisfaction a live coding session ensues. 

I have to admit, the thought of the code review made me nervous. Although I felt as if I had an understanding of the material due to the fact that my CLI gem project managed to run successfully, the notion of being tested gave me butterflies as my heart began to race and my palms began to sweat. 

My first submission of my project for code review went ok. Yes, I said first. Although my project ran, the reviewer called upon me to refactor my code as our meeting time dwindled. In going back through my code to refactor it in order to have all of my “puts” statements in the appropriate file I ran into trouble getting my program to run as intended. Once I managed to get the kinks out I was ready to resubmit the project for a second code review. 

During my second and successful attempt, I managed to showcase my understanding of the ruby fundamentals by answering the posed questions correctly and holding my own during the live coding portion. 

Once the code review process was over I had some time to reflect on the experience. While it was nerve-racking, it gave me the opportunity to talk and explain my process for the code that was written. I found that there is a profound difference from struggling through the code and thinking you have the thorough understanding of the code to talk about it so a layperson can understand and being able to live code on the spot. 

How I Made My First CodePen with the #VWC CodePen Team https://dev.to/vetswhocode/how-i-made-my-first-codepen-with-the-vwc-codepen-team-4oe

First, can I begin by stating that completing a project while having a migraine is NOT ideal nor the definition of fun. Moving on from the obvious, let me take you through my experience with my first Flatiron Portfolio Project. 

To be honest, I believe at the beginning I put a lot of pressure on myself to pick an amazing subject of which to base the project on. Given examples included, Movies Opening Soon or Libraries Near you and I wanted to come up with something catchy, creative and useful! I ultimately focused on wanted to address and need and found a website that listed 30 Best Autism Spectrum Family-Friendly Vacation Ideas. While this site provided straight forward information at first glance, it proved to be a nightmare to scrape.  

Scraping. Scraping this site took a number of days, miscalculations and hair-pulling sessions. Eventually, I had a breakthrough. Once the breakthrough happened it was smooth sailing from there. 

On this journey that we call life, I have been given a ton of lemons along the way. After a car accident that led me to reevaluate major items in my life, I eventually was presented with the opportunity to participate in a local coding boot camp which I jumped at the chance to explore. One of the many, ahem, characteristics about myself is that I love the idea of continuous exploration and learning.

It is through this quest for knowledge that I enjoy meeting and helping new people. In helping others, on more than one occasion I would be asked to help create or improve their websites and at the time of their asking, I was not in the position to do such a task although the task intrigued me on many levels. With this desire to help those in need, in addition to my own intrigue of web development and design I began to soak in the information that was presented to me through the Gainesville Dev Academy in 2016. After the completion of the program, I took on a brief internship with a tech company in Gainesville, Florida where I gained experience optimizing landing pages and well as creating pages for their existing site. After the duration of the internship, I would go on to work independently from online tutorials.

One day, as I was scrolling through my newsfeed and playing around on the interwebs I came across an advertisement for a chance at a Grow with Google Scholarship. At the time, I had little to no doubt that I would even be close to consideration for such an opportunity but I applied anyway because I could not stop thinking about how even if I would be so lucky to be chosen for the scholarship opportunity what that would mean for advancing my skillset in addition to the future employment opportunities that such an opportunity could bring. Not only was I awarded the scholarship but after completing the scholarship round, I was selected to continue with the Nanodegree portion fully paid through the Grow with Google Scholarship. Needless to say that I was humbled and ecstatic!!

Before learning about my selection in the next round of the Nanodegree selection I came across another scholarship application for Women in Tech for a full-stack web development program. Not certain of what was to come of the Grow with Google scholarship I applied and voilà! I was awarded the Women in Tech scholarship for the Flatiron Full-stack Web Development Program.