Today was a rather laid back day since the start of HRR. Since this was the second day of the Data Structures sprint, my partner and I continued implementing simple data structures.

Although days 1 and 2 are sectioned off for sprint 1 of the two 2-day sprints, my pair finished the basic minimum requirements of sprint 1, queue and stack, early in the day.

This became a little awkward/more challenging as we moved on to the second sprint because the lecture videos and curriculum scheduled for today were coming at a time after we happened to implement/work on the data structures that were discussed in the lectures. Oops.

If anything though, this made my partner and I do research on the data structure at hand and reason our way about the implementation. Without the shortcuts of concise explanation on the details of linked lists and trees before implementation, I think today’s pair programming time helped develop our skills of solving problems in the future, specifically in cases when the answer isn’t apparent or laid out.

In addition to working on the sprint today, my cohort met our assigned job outcomes counselor. It was assuring to see such an early appearance from someone who would be working to help us secure jobs towards the end of the program and beyond. Our counselor posed the question of what our career goal was immediately after the program.

In my case, my goal is to become a full-time employed software engineer at a preexisting company. Other common choices are to look for remote work (full-time or contract) or start a company. My cohort’s counselor mentioned that in the case that one of us planned to vacation for more than 2 weeks after graduating, we needed to let her know. Hmm… maybe the solution to finding vacation time is to get a job at a company with flexible vacation days.