It’s been over two months since I’ve posted anything and part of me doesn’t even know where to start. It’s been a rough few weeks and keeping up with a blog didn’t seem like anything of a priority. My sister was diagnosed with cancer, and I had to go up there and help her with things since she had surgery to remove the tumor. Apparently it came back already and it hadn’t been a month since the surgery. She starts chemo in January so I need to figure out what to do and how I’ll help her. I came back home feeling depleted; just emotionally empty and very very tired. I barely slept when I was there, and there were many emotional days with my mom. I told my sister that if she lost her hair due to chemo, I would shave my head. Why not? It’s just hair, and I don’t know if I care anymore. I just want her to get better as soon as possible. That, and it kills me to see my mom and dad cry and be sad. I wish I could do more. Christmas was yesterday and I had a lovely few days with Vin. We watched a lot of Harry Potter, had great food, and more than a few drinks. It’s our 3rd Christmas together, and now we have another year coming for us!

Besides all that, I’ve been preparing for my first written and interview assessment for Launch School. Never in my life have I had a more grueling process of studying than for these two tests. Not for the ASVAB, SATS, any of my other exams in architecture school. This is how they are broken down:

Written: You have 3 hours to take the exam. If you go anytime past that, you start to lose points immediately. There are approximately 20 questions, and from what I’ve read from fellow students study tips, you might have around 8-10 minutes per question. The questions are long answer format; explaining concepts at a **mastery** level, what is output and what is returned, and why. Then you have to explain at a deeper fundamental level some underlying principle or concept that the code example is demonstrating, such as variable shadowing. When I say mastery level, I mean you have to be extremely precise, and be able to explain exactly what is going on in the code. Line by line. If you leave anything out, you will lose points. LS doesn’t provide you with any timers so it’s on us to keep track of time. Answers are submitted in markdown format, if not formatted properly, you lose points.

Interview: The length of this assessment varies depending on (I assume) the questions that you will receive and how long it takes you to do them. The interviewer will give you two. From what I heard though, it should be around 20 minutes per question. This is the more difficult assessment, as you have to solve coding challenges whilst explaining your thought process **out loud** to the interviewer, who is watching you as you sweat it out. There’s no hiding in this one, which honestly sounds scary as hell. The point of this is to build you up into a competent and confident person when you eventually move on to real world job interviews. They want to make sure you know how to write code, speak code, understand the thought process and can handle the pressure. Going through this curriculum, you learn how to utilize the PEDAC process (which I’ve talked about before) to help guide you through understanding the problem thoroughly to solving it. I’m not sure if you could pass this assessment just be arriving at a solution and not explain any of your thought process. This helps the interviewer get a glimpse into how you approach problem solving, and if you get stuck, allow them to see if you can go back to your algorithm and get yourself out of the situation. If you’re fumbling around without any idea of what you’re doing, then that’s a sure sign that you aren’t ready for the next stage.

This is a lot to be worried about, and just thinking about it all exhausts me. I’m very tired today and it’s times like these that make my anxiety even more difficult to deal with. It’s just basic fear of failure, which I’m sure everyone has. I just don’t want to let myself down, you know?

For the rest of the day I’ll be reviewing local variable scope, mutability of methods, and breaking down code examples. Tomorrow I will take a mock test that I’ve created for myself to gauge how well I do under time pressure. I need to be able to explain these concepts under 10 minutes or less, and figure out formatting. I can’t be doing anything for the first time when I’m taking the actual assessment. My goal is to take the written on Saturday, or Sunday if needed.

My palms are sweating just thinking about it! Anyways, it’s time to study. Goodbye for now.