What have I been up to?! I haven’t felt like I’ve done a lot, but we did some vacationing & I wasn’t prioritizing work. Most of this has been done within the last few days.

  1. I started some LinkedIn Learning courses. I needed to see something tangible to make me feel like I’m making progress and when I complete the courses, I get a certificate on my profile. Hiring managers can see these too, so I’m also making myself more marketable. I’m just doing the free courses that are applicable right now and in the future I might pay for a subscription. I like the format of the courses. So far I’ve completed “Time Management: Working From Home”, “Succeeding in Web Development: Full Stack and Front End” and “HTML Essential Training”. I’m currently about halfway through “CSS Essential Training”.
    1. The CSS course has a portfolio/resume project that I’m working on.
    2. I also built the bones of a website for my daughters bracelet business. She thought I was working as a coder already, but I explained that I was still learning. I showed her a tiny bit of my capabilities (just a little bit of html, really, not even any CSS) & she was excited to see her own website! She said that as I learn “styling” that we’ll be able to make her site look nicer.
  2. I joined HackerRank and have received 2 stars in SQL so far. Again, I wanted to test what I’ve learned and be able to see something tangible (stars are great).
  3. Speaking of SQL, I finished the course through Mike Dane & FreeCodeCamp. It was pretty useful. I started reading Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes. We covered a lot of the book in the course, but there are some things that are new to me as well.
  4. I signed up for a free web development course starting 8/23. The course follows along with the Responsive Web Design track on FreeCodeCamp which I started at the beginning of this journey. Since signing up, I went back to FCC & did more of the course myself. I finished out the HTML sections & I’m 3/4 of the way through the CSS sections. Since I did/am doing the LinkedIn Learning, the FCC course feels more like a review - I’m just flying through it. I plan on keeping up the momentum with it & if I have any issues, I can ask questions in the class once it starts. However, I might not even need to do the class at all. It doesn’t start for another week & I’m already almost 4 weeks through the curriculum.