I'm going back to Pitt.
So, if you have been following my journey for the last few months you know I quit school during an intense period of depression— a kind of nervous breakdown. I am finally coming out that, and am working quite hard on the things I had set up when I quit. I’ve worked harder at learning, growing, and building since quitting.
I need to get a medical withdrawal from the school— I left the semester under the care of a doctor but I didn’t properly withdraw— I could barely leave my apartment. It was pretty bad. So if I didn’t get the medical withdrawal, I would have failed the semester. I told my advisor I planned on coming back but not right now. I said it to be pleasant. She told me I would need to come back before Fall 2017 or I’d go inactive.
I posted on Facebook about it and said I planned to go inactive. My opinionated friend I know in real life and some that I’ve been “friends” with for many years encouraged me to continue. In fact, my buddy Joe, who really started this journey I am on now by splitting his majors up 1 told me to “get that degree. Goddammit. It opens all kinds of doors, no matter what you major in. Don’t let them tell you no. Don’t give up.”
Reevaluating School
I decided to go back. I am not really looking forward to it, to be perfectly honest. I missed it in some ways and in more ways I am perfectly happy with this structure. But I know they’re right. So I decided instead of CS, I’d do Information Science, which is programming, business, and design. This is the easiest path to a BS for me. And I will have that piece of paper. Soooo… H2P!?
Confidence in Building the Contacts App
I had to admit to a few people that I am really afraid of the blank text editor.
I was so afraid of it, I picked up a book that was on my iPad that I had downloaded a long time ago called Thinking Like a Programmer by V. Anton Spraul. I mentioned it in the last blog post.
Well, after reading the introduction and writing that blog post, I went to bed and before I fell asleep, I was thinking about my Contacts app. When I fell asleep, I dreamt about the app, how to structure it, using prototypes, breaking things down with functions in an OOP way. When I woke up I half-remembered but my mind got jogged by talking to a friend.
I started working on it. I asked questions on Code Newbie Slack. I opened up the MDN docs on Dash. I started to build it.
This gave me the confidence I needed to look at other projects. I found the documentation for the Alfred workflows I want to build. I feel comfortable reading those docs and I think I will be starting it soon.
Travis CI and Shields.io Badges
It took me a while to set up Travis CI and Shields.io badges. I still don’t know how to get the amount of commits I have made since a certain version of my app to show on the badge.
I wanted to use my GitHub page to show my documentation. It took me four hours to figure this out. I stayed up until 3 am trying to get it to work and I finally did it. This is where my badges are. I plan on adding more.
You can find my paltry docs here.
- I was going to just get my MFA and that was it until I saw him go for his MFA and law school. I then thought I could get a CS degree and an MFA but quickly abandoned writing as programming got more intense and I fell in love with it. ↩︎
- I was going to just get my MFA and that was it until I saw him go for his MFA and law school. I then thought I could get a CS degree and an MFA but quickly abandoned writing as programming got more intense and I fell in love with it. ↩︎
I'm going back to Pitt.
So, if you have been following my journey for the last few months you know I quit school during an intense period of depression— a kind of nervous breakdown. I am finally coming out that, and am working quite hard on the things I had set up when I quit. I’ve worked harder at learning, growing, and building since quitting. I need to get a medical withdrawal from the school— I left the semester under the care of a doctor but I didn’t properly withdraw— I could barely leave my apartment. It was pretty bad. So if I didn’t get the medical withdrawal, I would have failed the semester. I told my advisor I planned on coming back but not right now. I said it to be pleasant. She told me I would need to come back before Fall 2017 or I’d go inactive. I posted on Facebook about it and said I planned to go inactive. My opinionated friend I know in real life and some that I’ve been “friends” with for many years encouraged me to continue. In fact, my buddy Joe, who really started this journey I am on now by splitting his majors up 1 told me to “get that degree. Goddammit. It opens all kinds of doors, no matter what you major in. Don’t let them tell you no. Don’t give up.”