First Week of Lambda School

Tonight was my 5th night of Lambda School (part-time full stack web dev) and the end of my first week.

Day One: Team Introductions and User Interface challenges. I met my fellow cohort members and Project Manager via Zoom. They're all friendly, motivated individuals and I'm glad to be part of the group. After introductions, we reviewed the material for the next day's lecture and completed some basic challenges via Codepen. We ended the day with 30 minutes of stand-up discussing any issues we ran into and how we overcame them.

Day Two: We were given 30 minutes to look over and prepare for the day's lecture. The lecture itself was two hours (with breaks every ~30 minutes). Our instructor was very thorough and made sure to answer every question asked in the Slack channel during the lecture. Much of the lecture material was review for me, but then I thought about how I would present it if it were me. That led to observing and learning from his presentation skills as well.

Day Three: We spent the majority of the time (2 and a half hours) working on a project that involved material covered in Day Two's lecture. Each project has minimum requirements, along with "stretch" challenges for more advanced students. The last 30 minutes were dedicated to stand-up with my cohort and PM. We discussed any obstacles we came across, how we overcame them, and any questions we had.

Day Four: 30 minutes of prep time and another lecture. Our instructor covered the CSS box model, different display: properties, and CSS resets. Again he did a great job explaining the concepts thoroughly while answering questions asked in the (lively) Slack channel. Ended the night with 30 minutes of working on the project for this module.

Day Five (today): I'm pretty used to the structure and schedule of the curriculum now. Spent majority of the time completing the project I started on yesterday. I encountered a couple of obstacles while completing this project (due no flexbox allowed this module), but finished on time with some stretch features completed. Lambda School has different groups and PMs for "5th days" (each student chose a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday for their fifth day). The last 30 minutes were spent in a standup with my 5th day cohort and PM, sharing any problems we encountered and how we solved them.

Overall I’m enjoying my experience with Lambda School so far, and looking forward to getting into the advanced parts of the curriculum.