When I jumped into the section to write, Hashnode told me: "Tell your story..."

Yes! I want to tell my story. My week 3 story. As a Kibo student. Documenting my journey for my successors to come. For my future icon. Because there is coming a time in the nearest future, I will read this and smile, with tears of joy leaping down my smooth cheeks, because of how far I have come.

  $ ./kibo_term1_week3.sh
  # @kiboschool, my journal is loading...
  Preparing week 3 content...
  #########################...........100%
  Activating the writing genie in me...
  Writing genie activated!

  Content loading...
  #########################............100%
  Are you ready? (yes|no): no
  "That's a lie! You wouldn't be here if you were not"
  Are you ready? (yes|no): yes
  "Let's go, comrade!"

At that moment when you think you have reached the climax in a movie, a new level of suspense and storyline unfolds. You find yourself engraved with the pen of the scriptwriter and your eyes glued to the beauty of the next level of creativity and organization. At that moment, you are not "you"; Something has changed. A part of the movie remains with you. In you. A new existence manifest from a moment of reflection. You find yourself reading your story while you watch. It is...

..."The Haha" Moment

As week 3 unfolded, I was experiencing slight burnout. I was able to almost effectively manage my time the previous week until procrastination set in. I had OYL left (course materials partially unread and assignment undone). When Monday met me racing to complete the previous week's OYL course materials and assignment, I knew I needed to work on my time management skills. I knew my previous week's approach to getting my assignments done on time and the course materials completed was almost successful.

I decided to try the method again. It was working, or so it seems. I just needed to find a balance.

I couldn't start reading any of this week's course materials until Wednesday because Monday was spent on completing the previous week's OYL course materials and assignment and Tuesday was such a busy day for me that I missed most parts of the OYL live class. I was already feeling so discouraged and chose to encourage myself by completing the course materials, practice challenges, and assignment of Programming 1 which I normally find relatively easy compared to the other two courses.

I enjoyed the Programming 1 practice challenges and assignment because it challenged my reasoning and got me to apply what I had learned last week in OYL about managing emotions and mindsets.

TOP SECRET: I love applying anything I learn to real-world contexts. It deepens my understanding of the topic and strengthens my learning foundation. To understand this in feeling, think of how you felt when you first realized that your theory worked because you were able to apply something you have learned. For me, I can remember the time when I had the first click of understanding the secret of salting food. I was mostly using the trial and error method in the past and the day I realized that I could apply something I learned from observing others to make proper calculations when putting salt into a meal, I felt like a genius!

Programming 1 — What I Learned

In Programming 1, we were exposed to Loops which is considered one of the superpowers of any programming language. It is also the foundation of automation.

A loop in a computer program is an instruction that repeats until a certain condition is met. A loop is structured in a way that it asks a question and the answer is executed if an action is needed. It continues asking the same question until no further action is required.

A common term you would usually come across with Loops is "Iteration". This is simply the process of repeating steps. Because the programming language of choice is Python, we were introduced to two types of loops viz: the while loop and the for loop.

The simple trick here... When you are aware (beforehand) of how many times you want to loop to run, use for loops. A while loop on the other hand is a loop that is repeated as long as an expression is true.

We were also introduced to two loop control statements: break and continue. A break statement inside a loop terminates/ends the loop. I believe a loop has a lifecycle and using the break keyword/statement, you aim to end the lifecycle prematurely. The continue keyword, on the other hand, skips the next iteration of the loop i.e. it skips whatever comes after it and goes back to the start of the loop.

NOTE: You may understand the concepts discussed above but if you do not put them into practice (a lot of times), you simply would not know them, or would I say how to use them?

After completing the Programming 1 project assignment, I felt inspired (temporarily) to take down the next assignment...not until I met "brother MT"

Programming 1 was my "Haha" moment this week.

..."The Grrr" Moment

Jumping into Mathematical Thinking, my feelings and mental state evolved. I enjoyed the course materials so much though it was very challenging to understand. When I confronted the problem set associated with this week's learning, I find pleasure and fun quickly turned into frustration and excess mesmerization.

TOP SECRET: When you become mesmerized by something and you spend hours on it and still can't figure out what you have achieved, you will become stressed out. And this stress can quickly develop into something disastrous to your learning process when it is ill-managed.

"Where did you get your theory from?"

OYL — This week's topic is called "Managing your Learning Context" — taught us how stress (when mismanaged) can grow into something unwanted that drastically influence your productivity

How Did I Manage Stress?

After spending hours or a day on the course materials (including the references) and not being able to solve the problem set, I resorted to going through the OYL course materials. Note that I love Mathematical Thinking and my "flight" from it is temporary. I should return to it this evening — Today's Saturday.

I didn't complete the OYL course materials before attending to the assignment for the first time since resumption. I found another approach to managing my study time while reading the course materials. Remember I am still battling with ensuring I complete all the courses' materials and assignments before Saturday.

If managing my time across three courses is so challenging, how about when the number of courses increases to 4 or 5? I am also anticipating the difficulty level of the courses to heighten with each new term.

That's the thoughts that I have brooding on that make me more desperate to get the most out of the courses while managing my time.

My Time Management Todos

• I plan on going through the online lessons asynchronously i.e. I won't wait until I completed a course online lessons before moving to the next. I plan to do this by splitting my study time daily across the courses' online lessons. The goal is not to complete one of the courses' online lessons in a day but to fully grasp the courses' objectives in 5 days.
• I also plan to try out the assignments before going through a course's online lessons to understand the level of difficulty and estimate the time it would take to complete them. This will narrow my focus to what is important and maximize how much effort I put into learning each subtopic based on the degree of relevance. I can always come back for the rest.
• I planned to follow my timetable strictly. I usually find it hard to stick to a timetable for a long time. I get distracted by it and sometimes feel like I am limited by the timetable. Since I have been assured by my student advisor that my timetable is a good one, my job from now is to stick to it, no matter how challenging.

That's all for now comrades!

Thanks for reading. Do react and comment on this article to encourage me to write more about my learning journey as a Kibo student. For now, my only writing driver is the squad cup...