If I had two words to describe my first week at the Dojo it would probably be "Holy Shit". Our first week was filled with tons of learning, accompanied by an equal if not greater level of frustration, all topped with unprecedented levels of accomplishment.
This first week of the Dojo has brought together all my bits of knowledge of HTML, CSS, databases, and more. Most of these concepts I had explored all throughout high school, but I never really connected them and dove in to them in such detail. The result was me learning more than I possibly ever thought I could learn in an educational environment. I am literally amazed at how much progress I - and everyone else - have made in just a week. Throughout high school and college I have always had a hard time being engaged, due to my ADD. This is the first time I feel I am engaged in my work for long periods of time while actually enjoying the fruits of my labor.
This week, we primarily did HTML/CSS work. Our main assignments were to recreate websites or templates from scratch, without the use of any framework or pre-made CSS/HTML. I struggled for the first half of the week, but I managed to get a hang of everything by the end. On Friday we took our first certification test, and I managed to pass, which was nice. We ended the week with database design, something I dabbled in while learning the basics of Ruby on Rails, so I felt a little more at home and was able to grasp the concepts with relative ease. I am excited to incorporate our databases with PHP and create dynamic web pages, which we will start next week.