Last Couple Days at LaunchCode

I finished my May Project yesterday! The past few days have been pretty typical, where I have spent most of the time responding to emails and sorting data, but one new thing that I did was looking for potential instructors for one of the classes in Miami where I would find colleges in the area and then go to the faculty lists for the computer science departments and get as many of their emails as I could so we could email them about possibly becoming an instructor over the summer. Overall I thought the experience was really good! It got better each week, and once I got the hang of what I was doing and once the people I worked for realized that I had, I was able to do more and more to help out. I'm glad I got the chance to do it and I don't think I would go back and pick a different place to work for since I got a great perspective on how people can learn computer science later on in life and how they can be guided in the direction of a future job or position in order to help themselves financially. It was a great new way to see the effects computer science on everyday lives.

Third Week at Launch Code

This week was even better! Since I have had the time to get accustomed to everything and because the people I work with now understand that, I have been able to do things that I otherwise wouldn't have been given the responsibility for. Every day I come in and Sally doesn't tend to get there until anywhere from 12 - 3 so I work on responding to emails that people send to get more general information about Launch Code and work with another woman, Lin, who has me work with the data for all of the classes. Recently I have been helping to figure out a scheduling error that the last intern made and it has been surprisingly difficult since there are so many areas and websites that are affected by it. It's been sort of funny for the past two days because we keep not being sure how long breaks are supposed to be or how many weeks off the last person was so I've rewritten the calendar many many times over and have a very thorough understanding of every single thing on it. Earlier in the week Sally, Haley, and Lin (the three women I work for) came up at different times throughout the day while I was working and talked to me about doing an internship this summer! That was really exciting and I was glad to hear that they thought I was doing a good enough job with helping out to do something like that. It's also really fun interacting with the actual students through email because some of them are really weird or informal people and respond with really entertaining responses, like this one guy who wanted to be considered as an applicant for one of the classes and only talked in all caps without any punctuation, ending the message with 'GOD BLESS', and this lady who was really happy just to get an update about her account on Canvas and, after being told that her homework was submitted, responded with 'Yaaaaaaay!!! Thank youuuu!!!!!!' followed by a couple of hearts, to which I was told not to respond. All of the people I work with are really kind as well. There's one woman named Amber who has bright red, curly hair (to go with her name) who greets me every day and who talks to Sally and I about her kids as a tiny break from our work, and there's a man named Chris who helps with any technical issues without even needing to be asked. So far it has been a wonderful experience that's gotten better as time passes and I can't wait to see what I do for my last couple of days.

Second Week at Launch Code

This past week I got to do a whole lot more! I started the week off working with Google Sheets and looking at lists of students who were currently enrolled or had already completed one of the Launch Code courses from this year. From there I compared that list to another from the website and ensured that students were on the correct lists using an equation that Sally, a woman I work with, showed me how to execute. They also had me do more stuff to help with the actual classes and I spent the majority of one day going through the videos on their YouTube account and editing them so that they were shorter and could be used for many other classes (the videos were from livestreams, so were more oriented to who was watching at the time and it was my job to get rid of that specificity). It was fun to be able to contribute to the content that would be shown to many classes afterwards. They also had me working with other excel documents, sending out emails to people who hadn't filled out certain necessary forms or reminding people to submit their assignments before graduation. This part was sort of fun because it was like working customer service, so I got to experience a lot of different kinds of people and responses. It has been much more fun being able to help out in different ways and getting to see moreso how the organization works with their students and how they deal with having so many and I look forward to getting to help out more this next week.

First Week at Launch Code

This week was the first week I spent volunteering for Launch Code. My first day, Wednesday, I spent mostly getting introduced to the building and the sort of lessons that are available on their website. One of the women who interviews potential candidates for working with the organization gave me a tour of the space, showing me around the large lecture area and the smaller classrooms and offices, and afterwards I met up with the woman I was working under, Hayley, who had just gotten out of a meeting. She asked me a couple of questions about what I knew about Launch Code and what particular aspect of the organization I wanted to contribute to before getting the both of us computers and showing me around the website. She had to leave early to drive down to Kansas City for a graduation ceremony being held for some of the students in one of Launch Code's classes, so for the remainder of the time I was told to familiarize myself with the website and start one of the online lessons that they provide. I chose to learn some Python, and was able to grasp a few concepts before I was done for the day. Thursday I came in, this time with my own computer, and wasn't given too much to do, so I continued to learn Python using Launch Code's online textbook and did some small coding projects as practice (I was told that there would be more things to work on next week after the craziness of getting ready for graduation was over with). I learned some more about Python and created a couple of programs that did simple things like calculate area, find the highest value in an array, or delete every instance of the word "bee" from a body of text. The last day of the week, Friday, I similarly wasn't given a whole lot to do, so I began to learn some HTML on the Launch Code website and began two programs: one that resembles a text-based choose-your-adventure game, and one that was a chatbot, responding to simple conversation. I also started a text document to practice the HTML that I was learning, figuring out how to do very basic actions like creating a colorful heading or making a numbered list. I'm definitely eagerly anticipating being given something to do specifically for the organization next week and am excited to hopefully help compile a database of helpful tutorials for the students in the Launch Code classes.

Pics of my kids - just to show how easy it is to do a post - this took me 10 seconds!!