Starting Fullstack Academy & Other Updates

April 17, 2015

I’m starting Fullstack Academy this coming Monday. I am experiencing bouts of excitement coupled with pulses of nervousness as I get closer to starting this new adventure. Ecstatic that I am one step closer to becoming a full-time web developer, but worried about whether I’ve prepared enough. Some parts of Fullstack Foundations (the 4-week part-time pre-work) were challenging for me. I knew coming in that my programming logic wasn’t very strong, so tackling higher order functions and recursion head on was humbling. I can say I have a better understanding of the latter concepts, but I am not at the point where I feel comfortable explaining these concepts to someone. Since I’ve finished all the assignments and have a couple days before class begins, it would be beneficial for me to do a high-level review of all the concepts and a deeper inspection of the concepts with which I struggled.

Note from the author: If you are reading this blog, you may have noticed the style in which I write is very much me writing to myself. My mind is rather busy a lot of the time so it helps me to isolate some of these thoughts and work them out in a text editor. One might say my blog posts are me trying to make sense of my mind.

Plan of Attack

I’ve been trying to plan my lifestyle for this 13 week course. Knowing me, it is likely I’ll be overwhelmed so I’m trying to factor that into my contingency plan. First things to go will be my quality of sleep, food consumption, then physical and mental health to follow.

Physical Health

The first thing I’ve decided to implement to combat the loss of control is to work exercise into my routine. A full workout is unlikely, so I’m trying to keep it as easy as possible. I stumbled upon the hundred push up challenge, a program that purports being able to do 100 push ups in six weeks. Six weeks just so happens to be the duration of Fullstack’s junior phase, so this will be a good secondary goal. The way the exercise program is designed, I will devote 3 days a week (Mon, Wed, Fri), 10 minutes each day. On Tues, Thurs, and Sat I will try the 200 squat challenge so that I am doing a little bit of exercise most days. I will do these exercises in the mornings prior to my cold shower. Cold showers are something I’ve been exploring for the past week or so. I saw this video about it and subsequently read a bunch of articles about the health benefits (check out Wim Hof if you’re interested), so I’m going to experiment.. I’ve been dealing with always feeling cold for a while now and increasing my cold tolerance seems like a good idea. They aren’t quite enjoyable yet.. but maybe after a couple more weeks..

Sleep

I think exercise and cold showers should help keep me physically and mentally focused. That in turn will help me sleep better. But just in case, I’ve started tracking my sleep cycles using SleepBot. I am terrible with getting to sleep before midnight.. For the last month I’ve been trying to wake up 20 minutes earlier every 3 days so that I can wake up at 6:10am by the time Monday rolls around. The gradual change worked well in the beginning, but my lack of discipline caused me to go back to sleep until mid-late morning.. My fear at this point is oversleeping one day and being late for class. I’m sure a switch will flip in my brain when it knows that I really need to be somewhere at 9am though.. It’s not used to me needing to be somewhere in the morning. Hahah. Anyway, based on what I’ve seen in my sleep data, the ideal time for me to sleep is around 10-11pm.

Food & Transportation

As for food, I see myself eating lots of eggs and cereal, maybe some frozen meat and whatever I decide to eat around campus for lunch. Making lunch probably won’t happen very often if I’m completely honest. Part of the reason is that the 1.5 hour commute each way will be a challenge. Taking the 7 train vs. the LIRR on paper is only about a 10 minute difference in favor of the LIRR. But the LIRR is an extra $218 plus the current fare of an unlimited MetroCard, ~$117? But under the surface, the LIRR is much more reliable and the commute is less stressful. The 7 train, from what I’ve read and heard, has been a major headache these past few months. For peace of mind and reliability, it might be worth the extra $218 each month for the next three months. My mental fatigue threshold isn’t very high, so it doesn’t take much for me to be overwhelmed.

These are all things I’m working on and based on experience, I tend to thrive in these focused high-stress situations, so I’m not too worried. Where I wither is when I’m forced to multi-task with completely different tasks, i.e. my previous job. Since everything is code, my brain will be in the same mode and will not require energy draining state changes. Oooh, I’m getting excited. My plan isn’t foolproof but I’ve tried to set myself up for the most success. There will be unexpected variables but c’est la vie. I’m stronger and more resilient than I once was. cracks knuckles

Other Updates

Sublime Text

After using Vim exclusively for four or five months, I’ve decided to move on to Sublime Text as my primary text editor. I had been resistant for a while to go back to Sublime. I first used Sublime Text 2 a couple years ago and wasn’t that impressed (though to be fair, I wasn’t aware of all the things you could do), so I hopped on the Vim bandwagon and embraced the smug attitude that is often donned when one prefers a CLI editor over an editor like ST. The true reason of my dismissal of ST was deeply seated in my desire to be “legit” and respected in the dev community, thinking using Vim would make me more “pro.” Hahah. Silly. Sublime + Package Control is amazing. Plus ST has Vintage mode which takes advantage of Command Mode basically ports in the best of Vim into ST (traversing my file with h,j,k,l and deleting shortcuts, etc). I’ll still continue to use Vim for certain things when opening ST is inconvenient or unavailable, so I’m glad I spent the time learning how to use it.

Books

I finished reading How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The former, has stood the test of time and contained universal truths of human relationships at its most basic level. I can summarize the book in four words, “Don’t be a jerk.” Definitely a good read for anyone looking to have better relationships in their lives. I read the majority of Gone Girl in the past couple weeks after starting over a year ago. Initially I wasn’t that interested, but I decided to pick up from where I left off and it became difficult to put down. It was riveting. I then watched the movie shortly after finishing the book. Eh. Great effort in my opinion, but not as gripping as the book. Though, I find most movie adaptations of books to be somewhat lackluster, so maybe it’s book bias.

Future

Very excited for this new chapter in my life. I am optimistic and am coming to terms with the choices I’ve made. Letting go of blame and resentment. Taking responsibility for myself. Coming of age. Becoming a man. Huzzah.