Tuesday, September 10th

The best thing about my partner from this week was his dedication to making sure I understood each exercise’s concept. This was also the most exhausting thing about him! I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t read and process each exercise’s directions fast enough let alone understand what our code was doing.

I became great at faking it: “Ohhhhhhh. I see. So then…[insert random terms used during the lesson], right?”

My partner pushed me to understand each concept – JavaScript basics, functions, objects, loops and arrays + Ruby basics, testing and katas – but as soon as we moved onto the next exercise with different context, I lost any understanding that was dawning on me a few minutes prior.

I really respect his patience and dedication to me. But it was becoming clear that pair programming wasn’t matching my learning style. Even worse, it was becoming clear that I was in the “slow” group.