Saturday, January 26, 2008

1.26 A day of frustration

I am currently working on my master's degree - software development. It's been very good for me - mind stretching and getting me into new areas in my field. It's also very frustrating at times. Today for instance. The particular class I'm taking is widely held to be one of the most difficult in the degree I'm working on, requiring a lot of coding.
I haven't found the code to be particularly difficult. What is difficult is the fact that to date, we've had three sets of homework. Each homework assignment lasts about a week; each homework assignment requires us to download, install, and learn to use one or more software packages, at least in a rudimentary fashion. Once we do all that, we can then write the code that's needed, which (trust me on this) by this time is a piece of cake.
This week's homework is being done simultaneously with the planning of our software project. After this homework is turned in, we have a generous two weeks to finish a group project, coding, testing, etc.
The homework this time warned us that if we chose well, it would be easy. If we didn't choose well, we would be sweating. Up until the point that I forgot a step after moving away from the computer, things were moving along pretty well. I then spent an hour banging my head on the desk before I figured out where I'd screwed up. However, as of this precise moment, my homework is working. A week early. I guess I chose well. And I don't think I'll take advantage of his generous offer to give an unknown amount of extra credit for doing it again the hard way. Moving right along to my spinning wheel, I'm going to work on getting my blood pressure back under control.

1 comment:

cyndy said...

Hang in there...
btw...the wheel is a great place to decompress...eh? Nothing like a low tech escape to deal with the high tech world we live in....