CS373 Fall 2020: Sydney Owen
Blog 6
What did you do this past week?
I spent the front half of this past week helping finalize things for phase 1 of the IDB project. Since it was mostly front-end work for my group and we had already finished our Postman documentation, I helped mostly with formatting the technical report.
In the second half of the week, I was busy with grading the exam for the class I TA for. It took a long time so I didn’t get much work done until just today when we set up a Docker image for our back-end.
What’s in your way?
Right now, my next task is getting a skeleton API up for Flask. We haven’t gotten Flask set up with AWS yet, though, so everything we’re able to do at this point is local. Until we get AWS and Flask set up, we aren’t able to know whether our skeleton code will work (we’re using a different Flask skeleton to set up AWS), which means the possibility of more work later.
What will you do next week?
Next week, we are planning to get a skeleton API up and running. We want to have some hard-coded JSON return bodies for our skeleton API so front-end can start writing code to accept and format the JSON. After we’ve gotten that done, we’ll have to redo some of our API so it queries the database and then probably some formatting of the database response.
If you read it, what did you think of Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?
The article was really disappointing to read. I would’ve thought we’d be further on issues of gender inequality than we are so reading that things have actually gotten worse with fewer women in tech is very disheartening. It’s scary to think that I won’t be taken seriously in my chosen career simply because I’m a woman, no matter how amazing my qualifications may be.
What was your experience of iterators, reduce(), and tuple?
I’ve worked with iterators a bit before so those weren’t too much of a surprise. The way they work in Python, though, is fascinating in its differences. Reduce() is something I haven’t seen before (at least by that name) so I thought it was interesting. It definitely seems like it could be really useful for the right instances. I have worked with tuples a bit before, too, so those weren’t entirely too surprising.
What’s it like working in a group?
Working in groups is always so different for each group. I’ve had previous groups where I felt like I was the driving force and the one pushing the group to work longer and harder. Now, however, I’ve got such an amazing group that I don’t need to do any of that. In some instances, I’m even the one being pushed. It’s a nice change and I’m hoping to ramp up my own work ethic to match theirs. Once I can do that, we’ll really be a team to be reckoned with.
What was your experience of the team contract?
The team contract was interesting. I’ve never actually used one before, but it does seem like a great way to get everyone in the group on the same page. It helps the group clearly outline what’s expected of everyone and what the consequences of not performing are. I like the idea of it.
What was your experience of the peer review?
I like the idea of having some way to express our content or discontent with our group, but I always have some worry with peer reviews that they’ll be shared. I know Professor Downing said they would be completely confidential and only the teaching team would read them, but I can’t help but worry. I don’t really have any gripes with my team right now, but I feel like rating anyone as anything less than perfect and them seeing would cause some tension.
What made you happy this week?
This week wasn’t very busy for me so I got a lot of chances to relax and unwind. It was really nice because I’d been so busy the 5 or so weeks before this one so I really needed some time to decompress. I can already feel things picking up again, so I’m really grateful I’ve had the time to refresh myself before diving back into the thick of things.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
When studying for an exam, do the majority of your studying two nights before the exam instead of cramming the night before or day of. Your brain does a lot of data processing and aggregation while you sleep and studies show that information is best retained if you’ve had a couple of nights to sleep on it. That’s not to say you can’t study the day before or day of an exam, but studying two days before gives you more benefit.
Of course, this information means nothing if you don’t give yourself enough time to sleep. It is recommended that adults get 7–9 hours of sleep. Keep in mind that sleep cycles are, on average, 90 minutes long so make sure that you plan out your night so that you don’t wake up in the middle of a cycle or else you’ll wind up really groggy.
