First week at Makers Academy: What was it like?
After writing a very long post about my first day at Makers Academy, it’s time to do a bit of introspection and reflect about all that has happened during this intense first week.
Although we had the possibility of doing the course remotely (which would have been quite handy since I don’t reside in London), I decided to go on-site for at least the first and last couple of weeks as I was keen on meeting my fellow students in person and see the differences between working remotely and working on-site.
The days are structured according to the following schedule:
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 9:00 – 9:15 | Meditation |
| 9:30 – 10:00 | Peer groups catch-up |
| 10:00 – 12:30 | Self-directed learning + optional workshops + weekly retros |
| 12:30 – 13:30 | Lunch |
| 13:30 – 18:00 | Pair-programming |
(On Fridays, the office was closed and we were expected to work from home.)
Meditation
On Tuesday, I walked to their premises in the morning once more, a bit earlier this time as I wanted to tune-in for the daily meditation session.
At the beginning of this session, our coach Dana explained some of the benefits of meditation and replied to a couple of anonymous questions people had sent during the week (about well-being, mindfulness and mental-health mainly). After this introduction, we went ahead with the meditation itself for another ten minutes or so. I had already done some meditation, so the notion of it wasn’t new, but it was funny to see how some of my course mates found it quite useful despite being fairly sceptical to start with. For people with an overthinking tendency like me, meditating just before starting the day has turned out to be an invaluable routine.
Peer groups
Afterwards, we were introduced to what they called our “Peer groups”. Peer groups are groups of 4-5 students in the same cohort that will have daily half-an-hour meetings first thing in the morning for the duration of the course. This is done with the intention of having a catch-up and check-in with a small group of people we know slightly better, in order to start the day feeling more grounded and to share our experiences, difficulties and goals. Each day, we were also given a question to ask each other (for example, “what is your secret talent?” or “what do you think you do best for other people?”). This made for some interesting answers and conversations and helped us get more comfortable with each other. I think this is another one of Makers’ great ideas, and it sets a positive vibe for the rest of the day and helps define your intentions for the day.
Workshops
That morning, we also had our first workshop (I must admit I was in the flow of programming that morning and missed it), but luckily the video was uploaded for all to watch shortly after. I found the couple of workshops we have done during this week very useful. In both of them, the coaches covered some of the topics we had been studying and gave us a demonstration of how to apply them and some programming tricks here and there.
Breaks
After spending the morning immersed in the different problems and challenges, I had a lovely lunch with one of my course friends. So far, I think every lunch-break we have had has been a really nice time to chat and rest in the kitchen area, which has everything you need, including cutlery, mugs, coffee, tea and free soft drinks. On Thursday, they even ordered some tasty pizza (including vegan and gluten-free options) to encourage everyone to sit in the kitchen area and socialise.
The premises also include several rooms for meetings and workshops, some musical instruments, lots of yoga and meditation equipment, an area to play table-tennis and a whole floor with tables, chairs and monitors for working comfortably.
Pair-programming
I would say one of the most interesting and varied experiences I have had so far has been with pair-programming. As I mentioned in previous posts, pair-programming consists of two people working together on the same code, one of them acts as the “driver” (writing the code on the computer and asking questions) and the other person acts as a “navigator” (checking for mistakes and guiding on what to do next). These two roles are exchanged every certain amount of time (20 to 60 minutes usually, with some breaks in between) to keep everyone alert and motivated. This kind of programming has plenty of advantages and tends to result in better quality code, although it is an ability that needs to be mastered and can feel quite difficult to get used to to start with.
I found that working in pairs can take longer in terms of writing code and organise what you are going to do, but you do save some time on debugging and don’t get stuck as much as if you were coding on your own (four eyes definitely see more than two, and the navigator tends to spot errors on the code much easier as they are not thinking of what they are writing at the same time).
Like in most circumstances in life, there is a huge difference between pairing with someone you connect with and with someone you don’t get along with so well. Sometimes, you can even get along really well with a person and notice that your pairing styles are very different and things don’t really flow. For the most part, all of the experiences I have had during the week have been extremely positive and there has been a lot of learning and teaching involved, as well as some nice chatting during the breaks.
As we are pairing over the content of the course, there are days in which my pair partner was ahead or behind of me, and some others were we were roughly at the same point. In the latter instances, it is easy as you just carry on working together on the given contents.
When the two people that are pairing are at different points of the contents, you normally pair over the exercises of the person that is running behind. This causes some curious reactions. The first time I found myself in that case I could hear my ego complaining in the back of my head (“But we could get so much more done if we didn’t have to get back to that exercise! We are going to spend all evening just helping this person do something you have already done!”). I think we all have this kind of thoughts, but it is what you do with them what matters. So I shut my ego up, gathered all the kindness and patience I could find and spend about 3 ot 4 hours as a navigator while my pair drove through their exercises. And to my surprise, I actually enjoyed this experience as much, if not more, as I enjoyed myself when we progress at the same pace. There will always be a certain anxiety towards not being able to finish all the contents that they give us, but I think the experience of pairing, helping someone else and also reviewing and making sure you understand and are able to explain what you have learnt is much more important.
The other side of this was when I paired with someone that was ahead of me by a couple of exercises, again an interesting threat to the ego and quite a fascinating social experiment. The person I was paired with didn’t seem particularly happy with having to go back to previous exercises as they were very “completion-driven” and wanted to finish all the contents of the course in time. It was a bit of a shock when we first got in touch to pair and they seemed to expect me to tell them to carry on working on our own for the evening, as their pair from the previous day had suggested when the situation arose. I had a lot of conflicting feelings at the time: I felt ashamed for being behind and keeping them from carrying on (“ashamed of what?” I asked myself, it wasn’t that I hadn’t put enough time or effort into it, but that I had been helping someone else and that wasn’t something to feel shame for), I felt frustrated as I didn’t want to pair with someone that wasn’t keen on pairing with me, I also felt stubborn enough to say that I was going to do it no matter what because it was part of our learning.
During the time we were doing the exercises I needed to do to catch-up with them, I felt like I had to do everything on a rush and not really stopping to understand what was going on, and I admit I also felt a certain degree of performance anxiety at the time. But guess what, once we were at the same level, everything was totally fine, and I could see my pair visibly more relaxed. It ended up being an enjoyable experience, but it also made me realise that people have different goals, motivations and egos, and that would be one of the things we would have to overcome during the length of the course.
Retrospective
One of my favourite moments of the course was the online “retro” (retrospective), an hour’s length session dedicated to sharing thoughts and feelings in a relatively anonymous way. Most of us didn’t have any experience with these kind of sessions so we weren’t too sure of what to expect. We were presented with a screen that had an island drawn in it, and was divided into several sections: one for positive things, one for things that weren’t so great, another one for actions that could be taken and a last one for appreciations.
We also had lots of “post-its” to write on and put where we liked. After around ten minutes of messy writing, we ended up covering most of the picture with post-its of various colours and sizes. Our coach read a good number of them: Some were thankful to the pairs they had had for the week, others for the pizza social-lunch, others for the meditation and yoga sessions or for the help received from the coaches. There were also many things on the “didn’t go so well” section, including some IT difficulties, problems with pairing with people at different levels or for a not so good communication from Makers (in terms of schedules, having Fridays for remote-working only or yoga sessions being online). There were also a lot of “actions” that could be taken to improve the overall experience (both directed to the company and to our fellow students). I ended that session with extremely positive feelings of happiness, motivation and appreciation for my course mates, it was a truly insightful activity which helped everyone get things out of their head and helped understand each other a bit better, as well as point to things that could be improved in a positive manner.
That was such a wonderful way of finishing our first week. The last post about my first week at Makers will be about the things that we have been learning so far (spoiler alert: they are quite a lot!).