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Rob Morgan - Turing Mod 4 Story

What was your biggest achievement of the module?

Mod 4 was the culmination of the mods that came before it. I had some experience in web development before I came to Turing (although almost none in JS specifically). I could build a website but it was extremely difficult for me and took forever. So my top goal in choosing Turing was to be able to work significantly more quickly and confidently.

The projects in Mod 4 were proof that this goal has been reached. We began with Palette Picker. While it took me a day or so to get back into the jQuery groove (after several months in React), I quickly became comfortable with the task at hand. I had already written an app with a backend at the end of Mod 3, and so I wrote the majority of the backend for Palette Picker the night before Mod 4 started. As a result, the heavy stress of that first week was mitigated and I was able to simply tidy up the backend and build the jQuery frontend. It was pretty cool to be able to h

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30-Day Job Search Action Plan

Create a schedule & goals for the first 30 days Post-Graduation

Design a 40-hour "work week" that provides time for:

• Code (ideally, 2-4 hours a day will be dedicated to coding)
• Outreach & Networking
• Job & company research and tracking
• Interview Prep
• Housekeeping (refining your professional story, updating your resume, writing cover letters, updating your Turing portfolio, updating your LinkedIn profile)
• Other (social networking, blogging, planning talks, etc.)
• Check-ins: who are you talking to and when?

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Environments for Junior Developers

So you're going to join in on an open source project and you're a junior dev. You've found a project you are interested in, there are other junior devs working on it, and the environment seems friendly and fun. Let's get to work, right?

The biggest hurdle to getting started is in setting up the environment correctly. I emphasize correctly because just about anybody can set up an environment just by following the error messages. Google your errors, copy/paste, do what others have done when faced with a similar problem. But this approach has some pretty serious pitfalls, that I'll discuss in this post.

I decided I'd help out the Open Food Network (OFN). Their mission is pretty cool: They give farmers and food hubs an easier and fairer way to distribute their food by creating an online marketplace for local food. Their goal is to disrupt the concentration of power in global agri-food systems. They are already active in several countries, although t

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Professional Story: Working Draft

I was always a builder and a creator. When I was a child, my favorite toy was legos. And I never built something with legos and played with it. I built things, then took them apart and built something else. When I worked in the golf business, my favorite place to hang out was the club repair shop, where I could build and customize clubs for other people. But the problem with that was I spent maybe 30 minutes a day on average in the shop--and 9 hours a day doing retail. So I switched careers to something where I get to build things regularly.

I began by doing marketing, web development, and design for a startup SaaS company in Denver, called AuthRocket. The only reason I was offered the position was because it was run by my brother. On day one he asked me to build a website. At that point, I had never done anything like that before: I'd never seen the code behind a website, I didn't know what Javascript was all about, I had never heard of CSS, and while I had g

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Outreach & Networking Plan for Module 3

Networking: I plan on attending Code for Denver. Also, I'm headed back home (Albuquerque) at the end of mod 2. There's a good chance I'll end up moving back there after Turing, so I plan to talk to a few people I know there over break.

Why will you attend this particular event?

I find their mission interesting.

Who do you hope to connect with at this event?

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Johari Window Reflections

This was one of those things that people could easily get worked up about, but ended up being pretty inocuous. I don't know how honest people were, especially when we've only been through a few projects at the time of this session. However, the things people said about me were 100% positive. I wasn't exactly blindsided. Either I'm a really good dude or else people just don't want to hurt my feelings. I'm guessing reality is found in both columns.

So while this was an attempt to help us learn things about ourselves and perhaps be surprised by some things, I'm not sure if that was actually achieved. I'd be curious to know if anyone else was surprised by what was said. I'm guessing there aren't too many shocked expressions.

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Feedback III Reflection

What are you doing well as a pair programmer and collaborator?

I'm good at listening to other's ideas, leading by example in working hard, and pushing through the rough spots by staying positive.

How do you use your strengths as a team member?

I stay positive and encouraging. I also make sure that the work gets done.

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Feedback II Reflection

Date of feedback conversation:

10/16/17

How did you prepare for the conversation?

I didn't prepare a whole lot. We had a really positive project that we were both proud of, so I didn't have too much that I was concerned about.

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Empathy Gear Up - Reflections

To be honest, I found this session frustrating. Everyone has experienced at least a few of the things on the list. Some, more than a few. In my opinion, the biggest one is: ___ You grew up in a single-parent household. It's my observation that this is the single greatest predictor of success or failure in life. I've been fortunate in this regard and I really feel for those who haven't.

While empathy is very important, I don't think anyone should have to apologize for the good fortunes they've had in life. Rather, they should use the good things they've been blessed with to help out others. And I don't know anyone who has been given everything in life--we all have struggles and the struggles of each person are individual to that person.

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Agile - PD

How you've used agile as a process at Turing and what kind of project management tools you utilized. Address these questions:

What were you already doing?

I've used waffle.io on several projects to help prioritize and stay on task. Before mod 2 I made notes to myself or made checklists with project partners.

What did you put into place in Module Two?

Waffle.io was the new addition in mod 2. In mod one I got off-task more easily and have been better able to stay with the mission of each assignment in mod 2.