Today we watched a fireside chat recording with Shereef - DBC founder. As always, Shefeef's enthusiasm for building a strong, healthy and passionate coding environment is infectious. He describes the fist cohort, being a marauding group of youthful coders rallied via Hacker News. Something he recognized was their ability to work as a team. Something in the office is broken? Take the lead and fix it. People are hungry? Order food. It was a group of do'ers, and do they did. Shereef goes on to describe how important this mentality is with DBC and with learning any new skill. Treat DBC as if you're a cook in a kitchen, as if you're one of many on a soccer team. If something needs to get done, do it. If someone is struggling, help them. If you aren't understanding something, go out there and try to understand it. Don't look at your education as something you purchase. It's not a package, it's not a service. It's an interactive experience, and your role isn't to just watch. Showing up doesn't mean showing up physically. It means showing up emotionally, intelligently, empathetically.

So far my take on the DBC experience is better than I expected. Well, I suppose it's been all I was hoping for, and that's something I don't take for granted. The curriculum isn't too easy, and it isn't too hard. I trust I'll eat my words in a few weeks and consider these early weeks to have been cakewalk. But the introduction has been a nice pace. I can tell a lot of work went into our syllabus. I like the repletion, the immersion, the teaching-by-doing. In the past I've tried to learn CLI and Git. I'm finding that it's finally just now sticking, and that's exciting.

I'm also really enjoying how active my 'cohorts' have been on Google+. People don't seem to be afraid to reach out and to help out. I've felt comfortable seeking help as well. A few times I began asking something that was stumping me, but I decided to try just one more time before "bugging" other people's inboxes. I know I shouldn't look at it like that. And I don't really. But I think it's encouraging to know people are there to help, but in the end, this is my education, my playground. I need to struggle, to know when to keep looking, and to know when to ask for help.

My end-of-week reflection is that I'm liking how things are going. I think I fall in the "imposter" category and need to keep that in mind. That said, I'm finding myself stepping up to the plate. And what's exciting to me is that I'm finding myself overcoming little bugs, issues, mis-steps. Instead of moving on and skipping over something if it's not working or doesn't make sense, I'm finding myself really curious to fix it/understand it before moving on. That said, I need to be cognizant of the time. I hear it's only going to get more rigorous going forward. I'd like to be done with my work by Friday evening, saving bonus work for the weekend. This means time management, and this means mind-management. I'm working on getting into my zone quicker. On the flip side, I'm working on being ok with working out of my zone. That say I can take advantage of the quick 30-minute window before dinner is ready, for example.