Wow...neglecting the blog up to this point, but I think it's important to document my successes and failures through my attempt at becoming the programmer I know I can be.

I've had 4 sessions with my mentor in the apprenticeship program that I am working through and they have definitely assisted me.  I suggest to anyone looking to get into an apprenticeship or junior programming role to make sure to have a mentor assigned to you or as part of the program.  They definitely help break down the issues that you might have and if you're willing to share your screen and work with them, you can learn so much more than just struggling through problems on your own.

Another confession is that I've been working on one project for the past 2.5 weeks and I've actually started over 3 times now, but I decided that this time, if I get stuck, I would ask for help and use the code I've pushed into git to assist me in reverting to code and apps that were exactly how I wanted them.  I need to understand that going forward with my career, I won't be able to keep starting over on a project just because I made a mistake...everyone makes mistakes, especially someone who has only been around a language for a little over a month.

I am trying to add other nuances outside of the problems that my mentor is giving me and that sometimes causes a problem because my brain is thinking about one problem and I'm supposed to be coding another.

It doesn't help right now that my daughter just returned home from 2 years in the Peace Corps in Malawi and she's taking off tomorrow on her new adventure with Change Corps...just so anyone with kids knows, if their job has "Corps" in it, they probably aren't going to make much money and you'll have to help support them..except in the Marine Corps...they still won't make much money, but they'll have other resources to assist them.

We are also dealing with our youngest child that unfortunately did not put his best foot forward in his freshman year at UofM and will be with us for the next year while he gets his grades up and figures out what he really wants to do with his life...not the engineering that he never really had an interest in...I understand not going to class for something you don't have an interest in, but tell someone before they shell out $30k for the year while you sleep away two semesters!!!

Tomorrow I will add more to my journey to Ruby enlightenment.  Until then...