Post Break Anxiety

First, I do want to say that I think it was both astute and benevolent of Scott to encourage us not to code over spring break. I’m (I believe) caught up on all of the dailies and was thinking of doing some coding over spring break just to practice my skills, but I’m very glad that Scott gave us permission not to code. As someone who feels very behind on the coding and the concepts that come along with it, I definitely needed a break from coding for a week.

Now onto my coding experience today. Kelly, Diana, and I continued working on Not Pacman today for a few hours as Kelly mentioned in her post. Normally, I am not one to not ask for clarification when I’m not understanding something from the people kind enough to help me with the coding (most often Kelly, Diana, David, Scott, or Joe), but today I felt very anxious about asking questions about while loops and for loops as we messed around with our timer. I’m still unclear on every way that the while and for loops differ from each other. I can compare their forms to one another without knowing exactly how they work. I think the anxiety came more from a place of frustration: I’ve put a lot of time into this class and I still feel fuzzy on arrays, among other concepts. Instead of just complaining about feeling behind, I’m glad I do have this coding post to acknowledge that I don’t need to feel afraid to ask questions from Kelly, Diana, David, Scott, and Joe- who are all patient people. Also, instead of just moaning, my plan for tomorrow will be to brush up on arrays through Daniel Schiffman so that I can then go to the open lab with questions. At least every now and then, Kelly, Diana, and I have a moment together where we are all completely lost about something. Today it was when we all turned to each other, trying to recall what the heck “push” does and why we were using it. So I do feel very behind still, but I know we are all behind to some extent on the coding.