I have been working on Parchment, a new OS that seeks to change the way users interact with their files, through a sponsored capstone, and so far the journey has been interesting. We started out with a team of 7, then down to 5, then just me. I have joined the Campus team for Parchment, which has been a bit of a pivot but overall great! I wish the best for my Ecampus team on their new project, and I’m looking forward to working on Parchment.
So far, my work with Parchment has mostly been environment setup and getting familiar with the code base. There’s already a pretty significant amount of functional elements, and the project uses Electron, so I have been getting some experience with new technologies, which I really appreciate.
As far as feedback on the course, I think overall it’s been great! I’ve appreciated the assistance from the instructional team, especially as things have gotten chaotic with transitioning to the Campus team. I really appreciate the opportunity to learn new technologies and libraries from my Capstone project. I’m also currently taking Intro to Networks, and during this past week I’ve taken such a deep dive into different transmission protocols that I can’t even use the Internet without imagining every single packet travelling worldwide just to show me images of cats. I’m also taking Programming Language Fundamentals, and the past few lessons have focused on learning Raku. I genuinely never thought I’d be learning so many new things all at once!
I honestly wish I had some groundbreaking life hacks for handling stress. I work full time and take a full load of courses, which has been a lot. I’ve seen some of my classmates mention they also have kids on top of a similar schedule, and I cannot imagine that stress. I’m grateful that I can handle the amount of stress I have, and (in the least suck-up way possible) I’m very fortunate to have some very understanding professors. On the off chance that any member of an instructional team reads this, I cannot stress my (experience-informed) opinion enough: flexible deadlines are a lifesaver in a program where most students have multiple obligations outside of school.
As basic as this is, I think the thing that helps me is carving out time for recreation, regardless of how behind I am or how little I feel like doing something ‘fun’ when I’m stressed out. Forcing myself to play a game for an hour, or watch a show or movie, or even just take a nap after work, is truly the only hack I have for getting this far. If I could go back to the beginning of my professional and educational careers and tell myself one thing, it would be to make time for myself because nobody else will do it for you.
In conclusion, I’m very excited to learn more about Parchment, to start learning Ruby in my Programming Languages course, and to work more in earnest with my Campus team. This week I had some family obligations that allowed me a bit of time on the beach (wow, what a sad little life) in North Carolina, and I was blown away by how beautiful it was. There’s so little light pollution that the stars are so vivid!
“The moon is set
and the Pleiades; Middle of
the night, time passes by,
I lie alone.”
— Sappho