8/12 - Exhaustipated

Today was a good day, though it didn't start that way. After 3 nights averaging around 5 hours sleep, plus physically exhausting myself more than expected at yesterday's race, I was on the low end of my emotional roller coaster. On the way to work I was tired and stressed, feeling behind again with only one homework assignment completed and one video watched to show for the weekend. I was not looking forward to work, where I don't feel I'm working. 

I can see the pattern where I feel better when I actually get stuff done, when I'm not feeling quite as behind. I handed in the homework I completed yesterday. I wrote and handed in my SaaS paper today, which has been hanging over my head for almost a week. I watched today's MIT lecture, and realized the concepts I thought I had to watch the recitations for were covered in the following lecture. While the recitations are good for reiteration, all the concepts appear to be covered in the main lectures, which reduces the hours of video I need to watch by 12. It would still be good to watch them, but if I'm short on time I don't HAVE to. I didn't get the 4 hour Plural Site video watched, but I also don't have any new classes on my schedule until Friday. All this was enough to reduce the stress I'd felt on my way in this morning.

By the end of the day I thought I had to redo two classes, one because the assessment I took did not register and the second because I could not find how to take the assessment. I figured out the first I just needed to page through the entire online "class" again for my score to count. The second I actually will have to take over because, once I figured out how to take it, I failed the 6 question assessment twice. I got two answers wrong on something I watched a week ago, taking the test while my team was in the middle of a loud joke-a-thon and I was barely awake enough to remember how to breathe. Silly me. (As an aside, I cannot WAIT for the noise cancelling headphones I ordered to arrive! Hopefully they will be here by the end of the week.) I'm not stressing about this assessment because the site insists I wait a month before I can try again. I'll worry about it then.

I had my 1:1 with my manager today, which also helped me feel better. He is comfortable with my progress and obvious dedication, and is happy with the daily updates I've been sending out. We talked about how to apply the Python knowledge to Ruby and .NET. I need to expand my focus to learning Ruby, which I plan to do through the CodeAcademy site. The Python classes should help with the actual programming concepts, but I have a 4 day session coming up which I'll need to be able to code in Ruby to get through. I was able to complete the homework for the Ruby class I took, but I am not exactly fluent. I would fall behind without practice beforehand.

We talked about the other classes I have to take. I made it clear he should not refrain from signing me up for technical classes, just because I don't have experience coding. For instance, I should be fine in the XML class, having read and worked with XML files in Support for the past year.

This was me by the time I got home. Not just for seniors any more! I left work early, immediately after my meeting with my manager. Let me tell you how much I enjoy the freedom of a salaried position that way. I come in anywhere between 8:30 and 9:15, so long as I'm there for the 9:15 stand up meeting where everyone on the team talks about what they're working on that day. I take a lunch if and when I feel like it (I don't usually feel like it). If I feel like it, that lunch can be 15 minutes or an hour and a half, providing I don't miss any meetings. I leave anywhere between 5:00 and 6:30, depending on how involved I am in what I'm doing. They get their hours from me, but I don't feel I'm working a full day because I don't have to take lunch out of the middle. If I'm too tired to function, like I was by the end of today, I tell my manager I'm leaving early and just go. As Monkey Boy would say, Boom Boom.

I came home and took a nap. I thought I would get more homework done after, but that's not happening. I'm heading back to bed here shortly.

But first, today's laugh. I received this comment on yesterday's post:

Dear Hannah,
I'm happy you're glad to have stumbled onto my blog. Did you actually read any of it? If you did, you would see I've only been blogging on this site for about a month, and besides my sister and my mother you are the only person to comment. For all I know, besides my family you are the only other person to read anything I've written. This blog is a completely narcissistic brain dump of my days, a public diary with little content anyone besides my family would find interesting. Why in the world would I feature guest postings?

This was not spam in the literal sense. There was no link to some erectile dysfunction or knockoff handbag site. There was no link to anything except Hannah's profile, which had no information whatsoever. It was the oddest thing, and random enough to make me laugh out loud.