Tomorrow starts our mock technical interviews and the students at Tech Elevator are frightened. As a .NET student, I will be with Java Tom (the other teacher) for my interview. He will talk with me a bit about technology and what I like about it, ask me some terms, and then give me a problem or two to work out with a marker and a whiteboard.

The thing is, writing code on a whiteboard is very different than what we have been doing every day for the last two months. For one thing, someone is sitting there watching you. That’s unnerving. For another, we have almost no practice writing these things by hand, everything has been through a keyboard. But the biggest hurdle to overcome is the lack of IntelliSense.

Visual Studio is the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that we work in. I believe it to be one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity. And I’m not kidding. I actually got in an argument with David whether the creation of Visual Studio is more impressive than sending a man to the moon. I think it might be.

Visual Studio makes coding possible for non-geniuses. At least that’s how I see it. And it makes everyone way, way faster than they would be without it. More accurate, too. The way that Visual Studio does this is through a code completion tool called IntelliSense. If you write the name of a variable and then enter a period, a long drop-down list of everything you can do to that variable becomes visible and clickable. Usually with just one or two letters, IntelliSense divines your intentions and serves up your code on a digital platter.

There is no IntelliSense on a whiteboard. We will write the name of our variables followed by a dot and then we will stare into the snowy abyss waiting for the answer to emerge from our own minds instead of from the depths of the .NET Framework. It’ll be a challenge.

But, believe it or not, it’s a challenge that I look forward to. A group of the .NETTERS convened in the green conference room early this morning and gave each other whiteboard quizzes. We did all right. According to the Toms, it’s all about how you talk and present yourself. If you miss the problem (and most do) but talk about it well, displaying logical thinking, then it went well.

That’s a bar that I think I can surpass.

No, it’s not the Most Valuable Player. At least, not when it’s used in the business sense. MVP in the computer industry (and most of the business world, I think) means Minimum Viable Product.

A minimum viable product is the goal at the beginning of a production plan. One of the first questions one might ask when starting a project is, What’s the MVP? Then you work towards that goal–to have a functioning product. After the MVP is achieved, then you go about improving it.

I’m happy to say that this afternoon, I was able to bring my side-project to MVP status. My side project is a book recommendation app. I have a database with some books (only 50 for right now, but I’m adding to it) and then a program written in C# that takes the client through a series of survey questions and then recommends some books based on the answers to those questions.

I have grand plans. I want users to be able to log in and have a profile. I want users to be able to bookmark their recs and save them in the database. I want the ability to peruse all the books based on keyword searches. I want the user to be able to suggest books that should go into the database. I want to be able to email my users their recs through the app.

I can’t do most of that yet. But the main idea of the app, the soul of it, if you will, is that a user fills out five survey questions and then is given a list of books that they might enjoy. That’s heart. That’s the minimum viable product. And, as of today, that works just fine.

The ratio of how impressive this is to how happy it makes me is all out of whack. It’s a fairly simple program. But I worked hard on it when there were a lot of other things I needed to work hard on. And I had some trouble with the main piece of code over the last few weeks. So, when it finally got working, it felt pretty good. There may have been some strutting.

But now the real work of the app begins. Now, I have to make it run smoothly and look nice. Tomorrow’s task. And the next day as well, perhaps.

They took it easy on us today.

Instead of the normal lecture, both classes converged in the main room and Java Tom (as opposed to .NET Tom) taught us about a testing framework called Selenium. It was a nice change of pace and useful information, as PNC Bank uses Selenium in their coding and likes their new hires to have some experience in it.

There was no homework on the Selenium lecture, so I instead spent the afternoon boning up on CSS Grid and trying to do something about my abysmal front-end skills. I walked through a tutorial on Free Code Camp explaining the subject and, surprisingly enough, I got better quickly. I was able to skip back a few lessons and straighten out a product page on the homework that I was previously unable to herd into a sensible layout. Too late to improve my grade on it, but still, I know how to do it now.

Then, around 4, we started drinking.

It is our halfway happy hour (though we are a bit more than halfway). It was once again at a bar called Beirs around the corner from the TE building. They bought us apps and invited all of the former graduates to come and hang out. I talked to a few of them. One TE grad who is now working at FedEx showed me this keyboard with a new layout called Dvorak. It’s crazy. All of the vowels are in the left-hand corner in a line. He says it makes you type faster once you get used to it. It sort of blew my mind. I might try it.

I also talked to a TE grad named Tek, who is now working with the consulting company CGI. He had some really interesting things to say about the pace and the on-boarding with that company. I was already interested in working there, but his opinions shot it further up my wish list.

All in all, a good night and a good end to the hardest of weeks.

Tom finally admitted it. After four days of homework-palooza, he told us that this was the hardest week. With the four to six hours of homework a day, the five hours of showcases, the mock interviews, the updates to our resumes, the updates to our LinkedIn, and our reviews on our capstones–I can believe it. People are starting to crack.

People are cracking so much so that Caitie addressed the whole .NET class about it. It was a culmination of many things, I think. The tasks listed in the last paragraph have hit some of the students really hard. On Monday, Tom reminded the class that homework was due two days after it was assigned. Of the 16 students in .NET, only eight of them had turned in the assignments for that day. Talking on the break, I found that many are behind even further than that. Having struggled with the last capstones, some people had days of backwork to catch up on leading into this, the most hellish of weeks.

But maybe an even bigger stresser than the work is the redoubtable phantoms of the job search–the resumes, the interviews, the waiting game of getting called back. It’s right around the corner. We had behavioral practice with Caitie this week, technical interviews with the instructors next week and then it’s game on. We’ll start applying. Things once theoretical will get real in a hurry.

So Caitie gave us the pep talk. She reiterated what Tom had said, that this was, indeed, the hardest week. She said to remain organized, prioritize the work in the classroom, and come to her with any problems or if the stress gets too great.

Coming to the end of the hardest week, I feel pretty good. It was tough, yes. Counting up the hours (which I should know by now not to do) I’m going to log somewhere in the range of 60 to 70 this week. But as I type this, I’m basically caught up. The quality of my homework hasn’t been stellar, but it’s all turned in and I feel confident that I’ve learned the lessons. And that’s all I can ask for, I think.

Today, something that I was looking forward to with trepidation turned out to be not as bad as I expected. The story of my life.

Our Pathway project for today was group mock interviews. This means that four of us at a time (two .NETters and two Javas) entered a conference room with Caitie. She then went round-robin, asking each of us behavioral interview questions. The person being questioned was the interviewee and the three other students were meant to be a panel who, along with Caitie, were judging the response.

It was tense. It was awkward. But it was probably the most helpful Pathway project yet–and that’s saying something.

I did some prep for this interview. Caite had sent us a slew of behavioral interview questions (think: tell me about a time when you made a mistake, tell me about a time when you were challenged by your superior, tell me about a time fill-in-the-blank). I knew from past failures that I am not so good at answering these questions on the fly. So, jotted down answers to four of the questions, filling up the front and back of a piece of notepaper.

When I got into the interview, I listened to Caitie’s question, decided which of my pre-canned answers fit mostly closely with the theme, and told the tale, altering it ever-so-slightly to make it coherent. It worked out pretty well.

It was good to say some of these answers out loud in an environment with no consequences and it was good to hear other students’ answers to questions which I might one day field. There will be more mock interviews in my future and I look forward to them now, knowing that the experience will soon pay off.

Things are moving quickly now. We are in the middle of the MVC Design style, which finally allows us to build web applications. We are also gearing up for the day when we begin applying to jobs, which is just two weeks away. Both the technical lessons and the Pathway Program are hitting their apex, and the crush of assignments and information has a dizzying effect.

On the coding side of things, it’s nearly impossible to keep up. As far as I can tell, there is not one .NET student who is currently up to speed on the exercises that are due. Today is Tuesday and on Monday we were assigned pair programming which took four hours and then individual exercises which were even more difficult. The next day, after the lecture, we were assigned both pair programming and individuals again–another six to eight hours of homework.

That’s a lot of stuff. But that’s only half of it.

Caitie and the Pathway Program have also been ramping things up. We will be allowed to apply to jobs on March 18th. But before that fateful date, Caite wants to make sure that we are completely ready. We had updates to both our resumes and LinkedIn profiles on Sunday. On Monday we each had a meeting with Caitie to receive feedback from the mock interviews from last week. Today through Thursday, we will be having group mock interviews with Caitie as the interviewer. We will be in with her, four at a time, as she asks behavioral interview questions. Then, the other students in the room will give feedback to the person who answered. It’ll be awkward at best. But useful.

On top of that, it’s open season for showcases. We had three last week and three more this week. The showcases are nice, I like them and it really educates me about the opportunities in Pittsburgh. But it’s another one to two hours of the day filled up with tasks when the canyon of homework looms, when the interview prep haunts, when our resumes and online personas stare like lifeless dolls needing to be breathed to life.

The days are long and trying. But we keep pushing forward.

I’m hoping to have found a second gear. Or maybe a third or fourth. I don’t know.

I wasn’t totally thrilled with my performance at the end of last week. I bailed out on a tech talk that I had been planning on attending and on Friday I cut out at 3:30 when I still had work to do. In my defense, I had a bit of a cold. My throat was sore and I was a little more tired than usual. But I think it was mostly burnout that sent me home. It was less that I was tired and more that I just didn’t want to wring my brain any more.

Regardless of how I got there, I didn’t like the feeling Saturday morning. I decided that after seven weeks, I need a refocus. In the first month I approached my assignments like learning their lessons was the only thing that was going to keep me alive when I was lost in the wilderness. I had to exhaust myself on every single last detail of the assignments. Somewhere along the way, I made an ever-so-slight slip and I vowed on Saturday morning that I was going to retake that lost ground.

On Sunday I sat down and worked through the homework that I still had due from Thursday. I spent over four hours on Sunday making sure I got the MVC assignments just right. I was proud of my work, because there was a point where I hit a wall, pushed harder, and persevered.

I hit Monday morning with a head of steam. And I needed it. We delved further into the strange world of MVC, passing information back and forth from our computers to the near-omniscient web servers. Tom gave us both pair exercises and individuals. I was paired with David and we worked tirelessly from 1:00, till just before 5. It was intense, but we finished.

I took a short break and sat down for the individuals at around 5:20. At this point, I had been in the TE space for over ten hours. I worked for the next two hours as person after person sighed, closed their laptop, and fished their winter coat from the rack. At 7:15, I wasn’t the last man standing, but I was close. Bleary-eyed and sore-necked, I drove home to get some sleep before it all starts again.

I’m ready to go. I’ve found a new gear.

After the lecture, Tom said offhandedly, as if no one would care, “Oh, and by the way, there’s no assignment for today. Just finish the stuff from yesterday.”

The room erupted in joy. We literally jumped out of our seats yelling–some of us sounding primal yalps of happiness, others machine-gun-questioning Tom that what he said wasn’t some joke gone terribly wrong. No assignment. No homework. For the first time in seven weeks. I might have had tears in my eyes. Maybe.

But, then again, everyone still had work to do from the day before. Like, a lot of work from the day before. We had pair exercises and individual assignments as well. Most people still had an hour to go on the pairs and almost no one had even looked at the individuals yet. I certainly hadn’t.

And, really, there was a lot still to do in our Tech Elevator day. We are not here for coding alone. After the lecture we had a showcase with a woman named Samantha, representing Bellefield Systems. She bought us a delicious lunch and then described her company to us, which makes a sophisticated time-keeping app used by some of the biggest law firms in the country. It might sound like a dry topic (and I suppose it is) but when she got into the different technologies they were working with to build their apps, she had me hooked.

Then, after the showcase, we had peer reviews of our resumes. Caitie grouped us into fives and we separated, trading resumes with our fellow students and offering critiques. I have some work to do on my resume still. We spent about forty-five minutes in our room, talking about resumes and work histories.

It was nearly three by the time we were done. We poked around with our pair code a bit, trying to make it look prettier and adding things that Tom hadn’t even asked for. But by the time we were finished, I was ready to call it a day. My individual exercise, which is due on Monday, will have to get done on the weekend.

Seven weeks in the books.