I’ve been promising to write a wrap-up post about General Assembly and have continued to receive requests asking about what my experience was like and if I think it’s worth it. Now that it’s been almost 3 months since the program ended, I feel I can do a better job of wrapping it all up.

What we’ve “learned” in 6 weeks

We’ve started our first projects, so this will be a shorter summary than usual. Also, we only had a 4-day week due to Bartolomé Day, so I spent a good portion of Monday making my homework better and better and trying to study up on stuff.

It really does feel like these weeks are just blowing by so quickly. Over the weekend I stumbled across some shortcuts in TextMate that I didn’t realize existed and made me love the software even more. The first couple days of the week were very mini-project based, which was nice. I said to my husband Tuesday night, “I’ve made 3 basic web apps this week…and it’s only Tuesday.” It’s really nice to have things like that to show the progress we’re making. First business of the week was that they mixed up the Camels and the Snakes, because when they polled us they found that we wanted more interaction with the other students. So I had to switch into the Camel classroom, which I like a lot better because there’s no glare on my glossy computer screen causing me extreme difficulty all day.

I made it onto the props board!

As I suspected, blogging every day was impossible; too busy with homework. So here is an overview of the week.

Yesterday was the first day of class. I arrived out of breath and sweaty from my exertions of trying not be late on the first day. Normally this would not be an issue but for some reason all three public transit methods from Alameda were backed up today. It’s the first time ever that I’ve seen the parking lot at the ferry terminal in Alameda completely full.

Tonight we had the orientation and installfest for WDI. It was really great to finally put some faces to the names I’ve been seeing on the contact sheet for the last couple of weeks. I was especially excited to see our instructors and learn more about them. We were separated into two groups and I was put into the Snakes Brigade (which makes me think of the House of Slytherin). I was a little disappointed because all the people I had already befriended were put into the Camel group, but I’m sure once I get to know everyone in my group, I’ll be just as happy. I mean one student in my group had a Totoro decal on her laptop so she’s already my new favorite person.