Pressure

Yesterday was our first group project day of phase 2. The subject was “A Flashcards Game”.

We had until noon to find a whole plan for a MVP (Minimum Viable Product), that we could complete before 5PM. Then at 5PM we had to present the project. We have the rest of the weekend to work on it and on Monday we’ll present the final release.

With that being said, we also got lectures, and lightning talks (short lectures on specific topics made by other students), and so our afternoon basically started at 3.20PM…
So with that, plus the 6 people that never really paired altogether, it ended up being a huge mess.

If you know me, you know that if there is one goal that I have in life, one thing that I am confident in, one thing that I like to do, it is : Leading groups.

So today, I took the whiteboard, tried to planned a bit, and we went on. We were 6 so it was a bit of a mess, but once we got the ideas all on paper (or whiteboard…), the rest was easy.

The problem though, is that nobody handles pressure very well, nobody including me, especially with the exhaustion after this week. I ended up going around trying to fix every problem of the team, and people ended up panicking a bit and falling in easy traps.

In the end, we were literally 10 minutes short when the presentation started (I coded for 10 minutes when people started talking and got it working decently…)

The after presentation was much easier. I explained everything I knew that could be useful for the rest of the team, then we separated tasks, and went on to finish our first release. Expect a link and more info on Monday when we deliver!

I have to say, though, that going ending up listening to some music I had somewhere on my laptop made me very nostalgic, like if I had not been in France for years, but also helped calming me. I now have a rage, a will to conquer. I will succeed!

Accomplishment

A few accomplishments this week :

• I got to know the new cohort and they are really awesome. I managed to spend a lot of time doing that, while helping my cohort, learning, and finishing many challenges. I count that as a damn good achievement, if not the best I have every felt so far.
• We finished that MVP, managed to split everything correctly, and things are going well for monday!
• I managed to learn enough to not be categorized in “I am good in this skill” for anything that we learned so far. I understand what I am doing on every part of every challenge, I learned about everything we use and can use and make everything without frustration. That is something that I will be proud of for a while. Now I do need to keep up with that
• Even if I am not a native, struggle with my accent and my language skills sometimes, and I did not lead any team for a while, I can still make myself useful in organizing our groups. It’s a relief, because with the knowledge we accumulate in here, sometimes I’m afraid I’ld just forget the things we don’t use…

And finally a new one that is not for me :
My mother, who has been struggling to lose weight for a while, is finally losing enough that I can even start thinking if she did not lose a leg or something. (I have ways to keep track, call me big brother).

That may be nothing to you, but I want to say that : I am proud.

More work

The weekend is going to be full of work everywhere. I want to show my sudoku solver to phase 1 guys so that they would do better than me, but I also have to work on the group project, I have portfolio projects, and I have personal projects on the side. 24 hours days suck.

Oh and my first portfolio project is up. It is not full but I’ll finish that in the weekend. You can check it at : Quentin’s Notes

It is a note-taking app. Not very beautiful, and the code (I’ll release that later) is not very glorious, but that’s the first one, and it does work ;)

Have a great weekend everybody and see you… maybe later this weekend actually… If I find a way to stop time to write.