April 26th, 2024
Currently Reading: The Imposter's Handbook
Finally getting around to reading this!
I’ve just started, but I’ve found that the way the author writes makes it easier to understand really complex concepts.
Finally getting around to reading this!
I’ve just started, but I’ve found that the way the author writes makes it easier to understand really complex concepts.
A quick update on what I've been up to so far this month:
📚 LinkedIn Learning:
✅Introduction to Graphic Design: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign
✅Learning SOLID Programming Principles
In addition to that, I have been attending Tech Elevator's alumni support sessions. I sat in all week on their reviews on unit testing, integration testing, and test-driven development, as well as last week's reviews on front end, Vue.js, and Vue 3 more specifically.
📓 I have also been making the most of the great weather to attend a variety of tech-related events in Columbus. On the 10th, I went to a 'Tips for New/Junior Developers!' event, where I received a lot of great advice on breaking into the tech field and how to be a successful developer.
🍻 On the 15th, I attended Tech Takeover hosted by TechLife Columbus at Fado in Dublin, where I had the opportunity to catch up with people I hadn't seen in a while as well as meet new people who have been incredibly supportive. The following day, I went to FreeCodeCamp Columbus' workshop on Open Source Discovery, where I learned a lot about git, pull requests, branches vs forks, and all sorts of cool things you can do with open source.
📖 Finally, I attended Frontend Columbus' meetup on the 18th, where I learned all about HTMX as well as things like HATEOAS, hyperview, and hyperscript. These events have been a great opportunity to learn, and I've found them truly inspiring while meeting a lot of cool people along the way! I really appreciate everyone being so welcoming and their willingness to teach someone who's still rather new to the field!
📚 The LinkedIn Learning courses that I took included:
✅JavaScript Essential Training
✅Building a Small Business Website w/Open Source WordPress
✅WordPress 5 Essential Training: Site Administration
✅Using WordPress to Create a Blog for Creators
I also sat in on a couple Tech Elevator alumni review classes, where we played around with the Pokémon API to create a full-stack application.
💻 Projects included fixing some minor bugs to my portfolio site. On that note, thanks again to everyone who helped me find said bugs! Please feel free to keep playing around with it and giving me your feedback!
📚 This week was all about learning, so I spent most of my time on LinkedIn Learning courses:
✅PHP for WordPress
✅Creating Block Patterns in WordPress
✅WordPress Content Blocks: Working with Themes
✅WordPress: Staging a Site
✅WordPress: Contact Forms
✅WordPress: E-commerce
✅WordPress: Building a Secure Site
I may have had a theme. I've spent some time in the past couple of weeks learning WordPress, but this week, I really wanted to do a deep dive and ensure that I have a strong knowledge base.
💻 I've always been fascinated by frontend development and design in general, which is why I love Frontend Mentor. If you're also into frontend and haven't heard of Frontend Mentor yet, I highly recommend checking them out. They have a variety of challenges to choose from. They give you an image of a website, and the challenge is to create a site that is as similar to that image as possible. I recently completed one of their challenges and created a recipe page (https://lnkd.in/gc_gXAcM) and have also started another challenge to create a landing page.
📰 I also spent some time experimenting with WordPress and started building out a website based on the Dungeons and Dragons campaign I'm currently in.
🎶 And without further ado, the unhinged Spotify playlist of the week is..."Rap Metal Academic" 🤷♀️ 🤣
This week:
💻I completed some more LinkedIn Learning courses: Creating a Responsive Web Design and WordPress.com Essential Training (last week’s was on WordPress.org).
📊I completed an Excel project that focused heavily on creating dashboards.
📚I read a book called ‘Imposter No More: Overcome Imposterism to Cultivate a Successful Career’ by Jill A. Stoddard, started to learn guitar, and pulled out my sketchbook for the first time in quite a while.
If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t feel as productive this week as I have been in the past. Mid-week, I received a particularly painful rejection from a job I wanted and I felt that I needed a moment to recover. So I took a little break, which may or may not have included getting poké for lunch and a trip to MicroCenter.
Now it’s time to get back to it👩💻
Thought I'd start giving recaps on my week so here goes:
📖 This week, I completed 2 projects on data cleaning & exploration using SQL. I also completed various LinkedIn Learning courses including UX Design (a 7-part course), Figma for UX Design, and WordPress Essential Training.
🖥 I also did a lot of work on my portfolio site. I started the week off by creating a logo, figuring out how to get the page title to change when using a router in Vue as you navigate to different pages, and reworking my GitHub so that when you navigate from my site to different projects, it makes more sense. I wanted to make it so that the profile page isn't as long and when you click 'View Project' on my site, it takes you to the code, where the readMe file now has all of the photos, descriptions, what I learned, etc. Then, I deployed it...and immediately had to fix a couple of things lol. It wasn't too bad; I just noticed that, for some reason, the LinkedIn and GitHub buttons at the top of my page weren't working. Once that was taken care of, I ran Lighthouse and worked on increasing my accessibility and SEO scores. I sent my site to some people for feedback and to just test it in general and picked up on an interesting issue that I didn't anticipate (glad I asked). In my portraits section, when you click on a portrait, you can't select any of the buttons I created underneath the portrait when you're using an iPhone 12. My buttons are covered up by buttons that are built into the iPhone. It's an easy enough fix, just need to adjust the height of the cards.
🎵 Bonus: my "most unhinged Spotify playlist name" for the week (because I'm getting a kick out of their DayList feature) - I was thinking "Terror Horrorcore Monday Afternoon" because that felt like a lot for a Monday, but then Spotify hit me with the "Chill Rock Always Single Wednesday Afternoon" on Valentine's Day, which...rude 🤣
"But why tho? I liked your last one!" I get it; I didn't hate the previous version of my portfolio site. But since the time that I had initially created it, I've learned a lot and I wanted a way to showcase that. I probably could've just thrown in a new section for the new skills, but a couple of weeks ago, I was hit with a spark of inspiration and it led to me completely redoing my site. So new year, new...site. On the plus side, this project was a great refresher on frontend development and overall design.
Since graduating Tech Elevator, I've continued to learn as much as possible about software development. At first, I'll admit, I didn't really have a direction, but as I was applying to jobs, the companies that were interested in me primarily used Python. Since I'm most familiar with Java, I decided that learning Python would be my next challenge.
I spent about two months going through LinkedIn Learning classes and even an online MIT class. While I was working on this, I was also going through the interview process for a data analyst position so I quickly added data analytics, Excel (specifically things like pivot tables), tableau, pandas, and more to my list of things to learn, going through even more LinkedIn Learning classes and going so far as to watch a 19 hour data anayltics video on YouTube.
Ultimately, I didn't get that data analyst position. They found a candidate that was just a bit more of what they were looking for which was heart-breaking. On the bright side, I have all of this additional knowledge and skills that I didn't have before. And I know that if I'm up for another data analyst position, I'll be that much more prepared.
Podcasts:
A weekly newsletter sent by Cassidy Williams where she shares "what's new and cool in the world of web development, with content for everyone, from beginners to pros."
Chris Ferdinandi sends out "a short email each weekday on how to build a simpler, more resilient web."