Emily Learning To Code

A little over a year ago, I started Phase 1 at DBC. It’s crazy seeing how my life and the lives of my cohort mates have changed in that time. Things are so much better in ways that I can’t even begin to explain. I have a job that I find interesting and enjoy and pays me well enough that I opened a savings account. My I-have-two-internships-and-a-job stress induced eczema that basically crippled my hands to the point of not being able to sign my name is completely gone. I’m happy.

I visited one of my cohort friends in NYC last weekend. I hadn’t seen him since January, but we picked right back up where we left off. The friends that I made during those 9 weeks are people that I talk to on a daily basis, even though we’re in different cities.

Back Story: I’ve TAed a bit, and it’s been an overwhelmingly positive experience. It’s awesome seeing people’s faces when the puzzle pieces fit, and being part of that process is surprisingly fun. Here’s the takeaway:

Things about students:

Don’t tell people flat out that they are wrong. Why? Because it’s not helpful. Being a beginner is terrifying enough without people telling you that you don’t know things, and being told ‘you’re wrong’ or ‘it should be obvious’ can leave a bad enough impression that people hesitate to ask for help. Instead, use your words to describe the differences and be nice about it.

student: is this a cat? ta: well, it’s close to a cat, but it’s actually a dog. Dogs can be pretty similar to cats: you want to pet them, they have four legs, sometimes they wear collars. Dogs tend to have a friendlier disposition though. Also they bark, while cats meow.

Pester your students. Silent rooms are a death sentence. Being a TA isn’t about being the best teacher in the world, it’s about helping the students to understand. So pester them. Breath down their neck. Ask them what’s happening, ask them to explain what their code is doing, ask them what would happen if you changed just a line of it. Be involved.

Congratulate them when they are right! If they sum up something and they really nailed it, tell them! Everyone likes being correct, and positive acknowledgments make people feel good and happy.

Let them type. If you want them to google something, tell them to go to their browser and google something. Try not to take the keyboard away from them. A lot of people learn well by doing.

Connect with your students. If you can explain something on a high level, do it that way first. Words like ‘kernel’ and ‘grep’ might not be the best choices for brand new beginners. Know your audience.

Things about other TAs/Teachers:

This shit isn’t about you. You aren’t here to be rewarded, you’re here to fucking teach. Don’t show off and be the oh-so-smart-know-everything guy. Put the spotlight on the students, they’re the reason you’re even there. 

Back up your people. If another TA flags you over to help with something, help them. Sometimes people just need another set of eyes, sometimes they need another way of describing something, sometimes they need help with computer hardware. Help out your folks.

It’s kind of crazy but now we have two new jr devs from DBC. And they’re asking me questions, and I can answer about half of them.

So I’m in a picture that Dev Bootcamp has up in a facebook ad. Which is fine.

My coworker took this photo of me in our new work room, The Panic Room.

Q: How do you comfort a Javascript bug?

A: You console it.

Guess who thought their sprint ended today and not next week?

Whoops.

So if you ever use version 2 of the AWS ruby SDK, it’s worth noting that the docs are..well... they’re straight up unclear, to the point that the senior dev helping me on my project thought it’d be worth writing about.

REGARDLESS. Let’s say that you want to get the public ip address of a recently spun up ec2 instance. When you create a new instance, it'll give you the private dns name and private ip. However, it's worth noting that you need to reload the instance in order for it to give you the public ip address or public dns.

ex:

We have to submit a bio to go with our photo on the company’s site. I’ve been struggling with what to say.

My coworker told me that he just made his completely up. It involves a glitch while ordering pizza many years ago. He then proceeded to make up a story for my bio, about how I’d always wanted to be a cow farmer. And how I’d go to my aunt’s cow farm and one night I was walking in the fields during a full moon, and a cow came up to me and told me that I should work for this company.

Last week marked one month at my job. And I still love it.

During that time, I have learned more about automated testing that I even thought I could know. Shit. Is. Crazy. I thought Capybara was cool, but no. This shit is crazy. I wrote a ruby method that runs javascript in a test. CRAZY.

I’ve somehow made a friend in another department. He is very tall. I’m just sarcastic and give him weird looks - he’s thinks it’s great.

One of the teams that I’m on checks in with me when they’re going to a restaurant for lunch that they think has vegan options.

In addition to joining the Bread Mafia(we make bread at work on Wednesdays), I am also part of my company’s Murder Lovers Anonymous/Junior Detective League. We’re going to be watching an episode of the Jinx each week during lunch.

I’ve found a comfortable spot to work from. It’s the couch in the room with all of the plants. It’s nice in there.

I’ve been reading Javascript textbooks that my boss sends me. Yup. Reading textbooks. Actually doing it.

I’ve been casually slipping bae into my conversations with my coworkers and none of them have been even slightly phased by it. They don’t even blink.