What a Busy Time!

Hello, it’s been a while since my last post (again!).

I have been pretty busy recently, and it’s been hard to find time to write. I still wanted to review what I have been going over this past week, and what my plans will be for this week.

What did I Learn Last Week?

Well, first of all, I learned that I may only have time to post about once every two weeks. Even though I have a lot to do, it seems a lot of it is busywork. I have a lot of classes and my personal project, however nothing particularly exciting has been happening. I have a class in project management, though honestly I don’t have much interest in it. I do the reading and complete the work as I can, but I don’t really dive deep into the material.

My SQL class is another story, however. I have much desire to become proficient using SQL, and I want to become better at understanding it. I found a site called HackerRank that serves as a nice source to practice some SQL. You can visit my profile on HackerRank here. I have joined a 30 days of code and a 10 days of JavaScript challenge, along with challenges related to SQL and Regex.

Speaking of, Regex is another thing I have been spending a good amount of time learning. I have always struggled with it in the past, but since I started learning more about SQL I realized it’s pretty important to know. I can also use it in JavaScript. One of the biggest challenges in learning Regex for me, though, has been finding a resource to help me visualize how it works. There are a lot of sites out there, actually, but they all seem to have different quirks about them. On top of that, the rules are slightly different between how SQL and JavaScript process Regex. One thing I learned from this is that SQL (at least MySQL) is not case sensitive for any Regex queries, however in JavaScript you must explicitly state when you don’t want case sensitivity.

Another difficulty for me has been learning Join in SQL. I feel like this concept isn’t too advanced, however it has been something I have struggled to wrap my head around. Admittedly I started learning this about a week or two ago, but the class has already moved on from it, and we didn’t do much practice for it either. I wish we would have dedicated more time to it, but maybe that will come later.

Something else I have been working on is creating a charter for my Project Management class. As both a blessing and a curse, this is a group project. It’s a blessing because group projects tend to be easier to deal with, especially with larger groups. What I don’t like about them though is I don’t learn as much by being in a group project. The work load gets divided so much I don’t feel like I get a chance to really understand what we are learning very well. Personally, I think it would be better if half the quarter was spent doing an individual project to get more of a feel for things, and the other half dedicated to a larger group project.

I have some more projects in other classes coming up too, but those have not been determined yet.

My plans for this week include finishing up some interviews I need for my classes. I fell behind on getting one of them, so I may have to submit that one as a memo for now and turn it in late. The other interview is simpler, so I feel confident I can complete this one sooner. I also have to produce some more work for my groups charter. That has been difficult because it has been hard to me to understand some of the readings, and the project itself has been confusing for me too. After my workday is over and I have some emails sent, that will be my first priority to complete. I estimate the easier interview will be done by Wednesday afternoon (assuming the interviewee is available before then), and I don’t think I can get the harder interview done until next week at this point. I also still have work for my SQL class to get done before this Friday, but often I can complete those tasks within two hours. And before I forget, I must complete a certificate by November at latest. Now is also a good time to pick one and do some practice testing for it. I wanted to do a certificate for AWS, but that may take too much of what little time I have available right now, so I think I will settle for just one of their HTML/CSS and JavaScript tests. I still want to complete the Cloud Practitioner AWS Certificate, but I may have to do that one individually and out of pocket in early 2024.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to last week, and what I have planned for this week. I estimate I can get another post out in roughly two weeks, so stay tuned for more!