CS Week 1 - Gameplan, Ideas on the Pioneer challenge, and what I need to focus on

So, this is my first week in CS, and there’s a lot on the docket. The coding challenges themselves are not too bad, and the coursework light enough to be pleasurable, but I think that that’s by design: this is the time to plan out what we need to do for the next month or so.

So I know what I want to do and want to focus on, which is the following:

• Get an account on AlgoTutor and start doing 2 problems a day
• After the above, apply to TripleByte and make my job-hunt a little more efficent
• Watch the company presentations, and apply to them
• To do so, I need a cleaned up resume, and a strong LinkedIn (almost there!)
• Plus, I need a updated, clean portfolio, hopefully something I can accomplish this week
• Read the Data Struct/Algo in Python book (seems really good)
• Apply to the Pioneer/Lambda challenge to maximize chances to stipend
• Which means building out that idea from Bad Version
• Reach out to the Punahou community in LinkedIn, my only viable community out here
• Reach out to the recruiters I talk to before, figure out how to build out some sort of network
• and of course, keep up with coursework

Gah, that’s a lot. I will update this post once I can melt this down into a few actionable things I can do for Tuesday and Wednesday, and kind of try to whittle this down as I go. I also want to write up some technical posts if I do go for the pioneer challenge, as that would make even a failure a valuable repository of information that I can use later on when I try to make other systems.

There is a lot to do, and not that much time. I need to just do what I can for now. Forget the distractions; the problem is, what is a distraction, what is a main focus? Must work on this.

Written by Kai Lovingfoss who lives and works in San Francisco building useful things.