From Front Desk to Front End p.6 My Program

More about Skillcrush, the fully online and flexible coding school I am going to that focuses on getting more women, LGBTQ+, BIPOC, people with disabilities, etc. into tech. They have a Break Into Tech program with Front End Developer and Design tracks focused on career changers who may not have had as many opportunities to enter this field in the past. It falls somewhere between paid teach-yourself courses like Udemy and LinkedIn Learning and most bootcamps in terms of both intensity and cost! The internet today is an INCREDIBLE resource for everything you need to know with programming and coding, but it was invaluable to me to have a program cut through the clutter so I didn't spend half my time worrying about what I should learn next and searching for the best resources.

The things that set Skillcrush apart from any other program (and from hacking it on your own)

• Cost: this is an important tenant of their accessibility
• Help getting hired (1-on-1 mentoring, group coaching, portfolio, LinkedIn, resume review)
• Inclusivity- Skillcrush is a femme-forward space, with a high attendance by women which is AWESOME to see in a tech centered space. But they are inclusive of EVERYONE and my friends from this program are alllll kinds!
• No entrance exams. This is another important tenant of their accessibility.
• Incredible support, radical reassurance. You may think to yourself "I'm too tough for that", but let me tell you, a constructive environment is critical for consistent growth. I call this reassurance RADICAL bc it contrasts starkly to the "no pain no gain" culture that still pervades a lot of tech and other fields. One of my side interests at UCSD was neuroscience and truly the science supports that fear is not a great long term motivator and fun is excellent for memory development. Skillcrush gives you creative and fun resources to embrace that learning and changing fields may be UNCOMFORTABLE but it sure is rewarding!
• Flexible and online. This allowed me to take on a second job which has been an amazing insight into a tech company and to network really hard at some conferences. I would not have otherwise been able to take these opportunities. Also having the freedom to take a nap when my brain is dead and try again later is invaluable.
• Market researched, best-practices, up-to-date curriculum that is always being updated- including semantic HTML5, CSSGrid, Github, JS React, etc.
• School of design as well as coding. Front end developer students like me can access the design track as well at anytime, gaining critical access to the Website Design Fundamentals class which I have happily taken advantage of in order to orient my brain more towards good UX design.
• Additional bonus series in UX Design, Python, Digital Marketing (I crash coursed the first class for marketing terminology for my current job as a consumer-consultant), Free Lancing, Word Press, and Master Class Webinars in a large variety of other content.
• Their blog is amazing and offers SO MUCH insight.

They introduced me to Codeland, as well as Lesbians Who Tech. They emphasize the team/community oriented nature of tech and create enthusiastic coders, then equip them with a bunch of tools to keep going and succeed. I have grown in many ways bc of them. {:

Connect with me https://www.linkedin.com/in/tauri-stclaire/, I'd love to hear from you!

Wednesday 7/27/22: 2 hours

I spent some of my study time today doing a check-in with one of my mentors at Skillcrush, thank you Lisa you are awesome!
Her and I are still talking about the prev issue I left us on a cliffhanger about last week, to to-be-continued.
Practiced more with eventHandlers by calling in dark and lightmode styles with a toggle button as well as using a button to trigger the appearance of a pic that can be closed with an "x" in the corner to reset the settings. Fun stuff!
Watched the video regarding function parameters to set the tone for tomorrow!
🎧 Flow Jams: Imagine Dragons (Arcane theme song got us into them)
🌺 Destress Activity: Danced by myself to some Trap and Bass

Thursday 7/28/22: 2.5 hours

So my issue from last week posted last day Tue 7/26 was with this sandbox which is not logging out a "Why you no work??" message as expected when saving. I asked a teaching assistant for help and she said she heard of a few students having finicky issues with Codebox that day, so maybe it's a deeper programming issue! I reforked the starter and did it again to practice using conditionals to loop in a few style changes and class add/removals for cat pix.
I started learning more about functions and used them to create functions with 1-2 parameters and use them in conditionals. Then I had a lot of fun applying JS to get this Vacation Budget Calculator to prompt, collect data, and display the result!
I spent some extra time today watching the webinar held by the founder of Skillcrush Adda on the "10 habits of Effective Career Changers". Re-watching Codeland talks and motivational material from Skillcrush helps me keep on track with my goals and my study habits.
🎧 Flow Jams: Moondog
🌺 Destress Acitivity: Neighborhood walk with my partner and hot shower

Friday 7/29/22: 2.5 hours

All JS today, but I'll be starting my next Front End Mentor project next week to keep practicing and honing my layout skillz!
I did some practice using return and .upperCase(). I debugged this Guess the Number Game and that took a frustratingly long time but I did it! 💪
And I did some very exciting work with nested if statements, keydown events, and defining selection parameters for keydown light/dark mode triggers + make changes with a dropdown menu.
🎧 Flow Jams: Sigur Ros
🌺 Destress Activity: Hollow Knight 🎮

Monday 8/1/22 2 hrs

Did a lot of function practice today with change and keydown events, and refactored a little code to make it more modular. And I made the background of this component change according to the mood you select and this one to calculate your subscription rate depending on type of plan and duration of plan chosen.
I'm working with my stepdad who is a graphic artist to make an avatar for my portfolio and I sent him the references and style guide for my ideas so I'm really excited about that.
Up until this point, I've kept a physical binder of all my Skillcrush and supplementary materials and it's worked wonderfully for me thru Layouts instruction. But turns out with JS this hasn't worked as well for me. I didn't have to refer to my notes nearly as much with layouts, and the lessons are so full of terminology that tabbing them is useless. So I've started simply opening the docs and using ctrl-F for a more fun time.
(That thick bit on top is mostly JS, and the paper is double-sided!)

🎧 Flow Jams: Moondog
🌺 _Destress Activity: Walk with my love under the waxing crescent moon 🌒

Tuesday 8/2/22

I realized I hadn't linked the border around my Social Media icons on my Unplugged website, so extended the reach of the a hrefs to the circles around the icons to create that full button effect!
I took sometime to watch lesson videos and read documentation regarding arrays and loops, oh yes JS is getting juicy!
I did a little practice and took a challenging quiz to reinforce all my learnings.
Then I took a few minutes at the end of my day in order to start my next Front End Mentor project. I set up my files, started a repo, linked the stylesheets and fonts to the HTML, and pushed it to Github. Yeehaw! (10 mins)
From now on I'm going to stop recording my total study time. Average is 2.5 to 3 hours a day, and it's just not that useful to record beyond getting the average. I will be closely watching how long I work on my Projects however. :)
🎧 Flow Jams: Sigur Ros
🌺 Destress Acitivity: Home facial