So it’s just over a week that I graduated from General Assembly and now I’m in the position of balancing self learning with job seeking. The temptation to just put my head down and continue learning (the fun part) rather than job hunting is definitely there.

Enter, my plan!

1. Exercise and maintain somewhat of a regular sleeping pattern!
2. Make sure I at least write one hour of code for every two hours of reading. This was some really great advice I got from my TA at GA. Both of us have the tendency to read all the documentation before we go to implement something - and then releasing that we didn’t retain as much of the information as we thought we did. So remembering to learn by doing!
3. Committing to do #100DaysOfCode and talking about my progress on the hashtag as a way to hold myself accountable to this goal. The great thing about the hashtag is that it’s also a great way to talk about code as well as actually doing it.

I’ll also be writing about anything I discover here. So, onwards!

Second half of day one of RubyConf_au! I really want to try organise my notes into these blog posts before my notes become more inscrutable as memory fades - so here goes!

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Today I had the amazing opportunity to go to RubyConf_au thanks to a ticket donated by Lookahead Search. I’m home after day 1 and feeling so inspired - with so many things that I want to read more about. So before it starts again tomorrow - here is my recollections pieced together from some hastily scrawled notes and tweets.

Actually, speaking of Twitter, @mistydemeo livetweeted the talks really well! But onto some of my impressions from the talks!

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I write this post on the eve of my last day as a student at General Assembly. Thursday and Friday I get to go to my first tech conference - RubyConfau - courtesy of Lookahead Search.

I remember when I first found out that I was getting the opportunity to go to RubyConf - I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be at the end of the course and preparing to go out into the real world.

Since I’m feeling reflective I went back to look at some of the first javascript functions I wrote in week 1, and while I can see my logical thought process behind what I wrote - I can also remember how difficult I found it. It’s reassuring of how far I’ve come to look at something that took me hours that would now take me five minutes.

I remember how bewildering Rails felt when we first started playing around with it and how differently I feel now. The experience of trying to learn so much content in three months has taught me to embrace that feeling of discomfort, and it’s been helpful when studying things like React.js, Immutable.js and Redux outside of class time.

I would be remiss not to talk about how I’ve met people in this course who I hope will be lifelong peers and friends. Both my fellow student and teachers are excellent human beings who I look forward to knowing outside of the school environment.

This is my first test blog post in my first jekyll site. Hello world!