These last eight weeks at Turing have been quite an experience. On the first day we had the choice between one of two groups: Echo or Foxtrot. Foxtrot would be the easier way to start, described as wading in from the shallow end of the pool. Echo would be more like diving in head first into the deep end. Supposedly it would all end in a happy pool party either way, so it didn't matter which route you took. I had been contemplating this decision well before the first day. Prior to starting we had been given a survey asking how many hours of experience we had. 0-50 hours meant that you should start out in Foxtrot. 50-1000 hours meant jumping in with Echo. 50-1000!? I had maybe 50-100 hours of previous "experience", if you count doing some online tutorials as experience. However, on that first day I was hyped up on adrenaline and decided to challenge myself to start out in Echo. Four days later I was quite sure that I had made a poor choice. I was struggling to get a start on our first project, Nightwriter, an application to turn a plain-text message into braille-like characters. Fortunately, our instructor Horace convinced me to stick with it through the weekend before deciding to switch to Foxtrot. That extra weekend turned into another week and then finally 3 weeks in total until we hit winter break after which the Echo/Foxtrot groups were combined. I'm glad that I stuck with being in Echo, even though it was a lot of work and a lot of pressure to keep up with the others in the group, because I learned a lot from the struggle of having to do four projects in those first three weeks.

During the first module I put in over 400 hours of study and project work time, so I'm getting much closer to that 1000 hour mark that seemed so crazy just a few weeks ago! I still have a long way to go to make it through to the end and that's all just working my way up toward being able to get my first junior developer job, but it feels good to have at least made it this far.

Here are a few additional thoughts that I have on looking back on this module:

• I learned to get help when needed, but not too much help. On one hand, it's not good to stay stuck on a problem for too long, especially if it might be an easy fix that an outside eye might catch before you do. On the other hand, it's a great feeling when you figure something out on your own. Additionally, there can be a negative side to getting too many opinions on how to start out a problem, especially if you're someone like me that has difficulty making decisions! At some point you need to pick a path and just go with it.
• Exercise helped me so much when I needed to clear my mind at the end of the day. Even something as simple as a 7-minute workout helped to refresh a group of us when working late one night. Toward the last couple weeks of Module 1 I neglected to exercise because I was feeling so short on time to finish our final project, but in retrospect I think it would have been worth it to make the time to work out.
• I was really bad at getting enough sleep, again especially during the last two weeks. There were definitely late nights where I made very little progress on a problem and then came back to it the next day and finished it quite quickly in comparison to how much I had struggled the night before. As much as I think I want to power through something and get it done, I need to be more conscious about getting enough sleep to perform to my best ability.
• And finally, I need to try my best not to compare myself to others, but just to compare myself to my previous self, in terms of how much I'm learning each day.