Sorry, I lied. We're going to talk about ADHD and coding

 

Every time I have a medication change, I watch season 2, episode 6 of Bob's Burgers. There is something about the way Gayle barges in with "Guess who's on new meds!" that gets me every time. Perhaps it is because of my own medication history. 

I haven't discussed it much here, but my genotype does not play nicely with most medications. They either don't work at all or give me horrific side effects. For most of my life, I felt like I'd been duped. I was Georgie looking at Pennywise in the gutter, but instead of promises of a paper boat, I was told I could function in neurotypical society. 

 

I didn't lose an arm or my life, just my physical health and all hope of behaving like a Normal Human Being™. After several years and two seizures, the GeneSight test rectified this for me and revealed the two medications that could treat my depression/anxiety and behave as expected.

What does this have to do with coding? In December, I had the privilege of adding ADHD to my long list of diagnoses.  Unfortunately, GeneSight does not cover the drugs that treat ADHD, so my healthcare provider and I are stuck playing the guessing game of what will actually work. 

We tried Strattera and I became like a sleeping dragon with extraordinarily high blood pressure. After work, I'd crash in my bedroom and annihilate anyone who bothered me. I use the term "bother" very loosely, as it was mostly my dear husband checking in to bring me food and ensure I was still among the living, bless his heart.  

Now I'm trying Adderall and hoping it will help my poor working memory. Working memory is what most people think of as short-term memory. While most people may be able to listen to instructions and immediately put them to use, I cannot. It has nothing to do with paying attention, it's that my working memory is so bad, I have no recollection of what I was just told. It's the same reason I may read a sentence or paragraph over and over again and have no idea what it said. 

Needless to say, this is a problem I am learning to navigate in my coding career. A lot of coding is reading, whether it be in the form of language documentation, proofreading your code, or deciphering another person's. 

My brain hates this. It causes me to make a lot of basic mistakes and I feel especially stupid when other people notice them (which happened a lot today). Here's how I'm managing it:

• I chose to stop telling myself that I am stupid. Why? Well, it isn't particularly constructive and I'm not stupid. I got here despite my ADHD, which is awesome.
  
  
• Write down everything. I do my best to keep a written record I can refer to. It isn't always helpful because I like to get hyper-focused on one thing and may forget finer details, but it's better than nothing.
  
  
• I told my boss. If you're comfortable with yours, this may help you, too. I explained that I'm in treatment to find a medication that works and I was worried people may mistake my crap working memory for not listening/caring. He was super cool and understanding about it. This helped ease my anxiety because I knew especially with the medication change that I'd be prone to leaving seemingly careless mistakes.
  
  
• Read things out loud. It will help you slow down and give you more time to process. This is especially helpful if you're facing a wall of text that looks like a blur. I will highlight with my cursor as I go along to help keep my place.
  
  
• Stop being embarrassed. This is a hard one, but when you find yourself making obvious mistakes, it is best to correct them and move on. There's no need to be constantly apologizing or explaining yourself. Your identity should not be rooted in what others think of you because people's opinions are unstable and constantly changing. You need to find your security in something immutable. 

So, that's why I haven't posted. I study a lot in a vain attempt to make up for my goldfish memory and I've been struggling with medication side-effects. 

All of that being said, I do feel optimistic. Despite my ADHD, I got through college and coding bootcamp. I can recall feeling overwhelmed/making "dumb" mistakes at previous jobs, only to excel with repetition. 

P.S. If you're struggling, feel free to reach out! I'm always happy to talk. If you also have a mental disorder, please know that you CAN  still achieve your goals! You may be wired differently and have to work harder than the average person, but it can happen! With every accomplishment, you can feel proud that you did it in spite of what can often feel like an impediment! (Disclaimer: It took me 29 years to realize this, so don't worry if you're not there yet.)

 

New Beginnings and a Mouth Full of Gauze

 

My mornings are anti-climactic, but involve an unusual step: Spackle on five layers of concealer to cover up the green bruise that's become the best of friends with the swollen lump along my jaw and cheek. 

I tell myself I do this not out of vanity, but of politeness. Wouldn't want anyone to think my husband is a wife-beater. It really does look like I've been punched in the face repeatedly, but what remains is the brutal aftermath of an unexpected surgery.

It was supposed to be a simple wisdom tooth extraction. I was awake, dizzy from nitrous oxide as my skilled dentist went to town on the tooth removal. I trust my dentist and feel like he is generally an awesome guy, but what occurred no one could have predicted. The bone my tooth had comfortably lodged itself into was calcified and buttressed on all sides. 

What x-rays had indicated would be an easy removal turned into a living nightmare as I listened to my tooth cracking into shards, unwilling to depart from their fortress. The rotating tools were brought out and I was treated to the delightful aroma of tooth and bone dust as my dentist struggled, the overhead lamp glinting off his magnifying glasses. 

I sobbed uncontrollably and finally, the symphony of saws ceased. 

"You really need to be asleep for this," my dentist declared. 

Apparently, in his thirty plus years of practice, he had never seen anything quite as stubborn as my tooth. Due to the 2D nature of the x-rays, it was impossible to predict. 

"Normally it's like pulling a nail out of styrofoam, but yours is like trying to remove a fish hook from concrete."

I was sent directly to an oral surgeon, my mouth stuffed with gauze.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

I started my new job on Tuesday, still bruised, swollen, and unable to speak coherently. It's okay, though. As I've gotten older, there's very little that embarrasses me. It might be due to maturity over time, but it could also be the prescription drugs. Who knows? 

*Disclaimer: For anyone jumping in, these are drugs prescribed to me for anxiety/depression that I take in the way directed by my doctor. *

It is so nice to be working again! My boss and team seem amazing. I like that there's a culture of admitting mistakes without fear. Several times, I've seen someone admit to missing a detail or another coworker notice an error and no one makes a big deal about it. They acknowledge it, correct it (or state their plan for correction), and move on. This is a far cry from some of the other places I've worked. There would be a lot of blame shifting, screaming, etc. I like this new environment a lot! It seems like a great place to learn!

Currently, I'm working from home. I've been assigned an "onboarding buddy" and I've been pairing with him. We haven't done much coding yet because our team is in a bit of a time crunch and it's all hands on deck, but the experience is still valuable. I'm learning a lot of new terminology and how our software is used and interacted with internally and externally. 

I had to figure out how to set up the mac and change paths, etc. This took a lot of Googling because the only other time I did this it was for a PC (which also took a lot of Googling, but I digress). I hate how a lot of instructional websites assume you know what Vim is or how to change an environment variable.  This may be obvious to the seasoned programmer, but not to me. 

Next post: I will attempt to alleviate the future suffering of others by telling you exactly how to change an environment variable, install Maven, and get other common programs up and running. 

Mini-post: Killing Time with Code

 

 

I start my new job on the 18th! In the meantime, I've been working on smaller projects to keep my skills sharp!

So far I have:

• Used JFrame for the first time to make a Java-based version of Flappy Bird, which even after I slowed down the speed, I am decidedly bad at
  
• Created a command line mortgage calculator
• Decided the mortgage calculator needed some pizazz and made web application using HTML/CSS and JavaScript. Screen shot above. 
• Watched a ton of tutorials on Udemy and Code With Mosh
• Katas, katas, katas...
  

I post most of my code on GitHub, if you'd like to see anything in detail. 

A lot of the material I'm going through is review, but I'm so happy to be doing it at my own pace. Tech Elevator was great and I definitely wouldn't understand this stuff without having attended, but it is incredibly fast-paced. To be honest, I felt stupid most of the time.  It's nice to go back and see that even though I struggled, I did retain a lot of the information. 

I considered making some tutorial videos, but they'd probably go like this:

1.  Intro that no one cares about/everyone skips over
   
2.  Basic code that everyone else knows/could write more concisely
3. Cursing. Lots of cursing. 
4. Off-putting camera angles that make my face look like a potato
5. "Plz subscribe, lolz"
   

I do have an idea to make one on basic CSS layouts. Just a few tricks to get your site out of the 90's. Perhaps I'll do that later, if I get bored and feel like opening myself up to another venue of potential internet criticism.  ;)

Graduation and What Follows

 

It's funny; I had a post waiting in the wings called "Halfway Through the Final Capstone," but I didn't have time to finish it. The last two weeks were a blur with 12+ hour work days, struggling through code, and finally celebrating success. 

On December 21, 2014 I graduated from The Ohio State University and ended the day in tears. They were the culmination of over four years of anxiety and financial instability for a degree I never wanted, but was pressured into obtaining. As an adult, I must own this choice, but it doesn't change the fact the financial instability has been ever-present, always lingering in the background as I struggled through now-resolved health issues and dead end jobs (no matter how enjoyable they may have been). I'd be reminded every time the paper statements arrived in the mail or FedLoan withdrew half of what I earned in a month. 

I always insisted on paper because the Gremlin of Pettiness inside of me delighted in costing the student loan companies a few pennies in profit to send the bills via post, despite the environmental impact. Hey, I'm still growing. :P 

When I was accepted into Tech Elevator and later received the Agility Partners scholarship, I was offered hope and a lifeline. In fourteen weeks, with the support of fellow students, amazing instructors, and the team at Agility Partners, I learned skills that will impact the rest of my future. Not just my future, but my family's future. 

Mike and I were/are not destitute by any means, but what we made would not allow us to expand our family. Since we got married in 2012, we have wanted to adopt a child from Mike's home country of Ukraine. International adoption is incredibly expensive and for years it seemed impossible to even start saving. 

Tech Elevator has equipped me to find freedom from debt and to hopefully start saving towards something (someone!) wonderful. 

Thanks to Agility Partners, I will be starting at Fuse by Cardinal Health in January. Excited is an understatement. 

As time has passed, I've learned a few things about myself:

• I'm a hard worker and don't give up easily.
•  I love learning and will stand up to a challenge.  
• I'm easygoing, but not afraid to speak up when it matters. 
• I can work alone, but I also make a great teammate because I don't see other people as threats to my personal success. I will be your biggest cheerleader and also, hopefully, your friend.  

I look forward to bringing these qualities to the workplace. I'm thrilled to start working on projects that will make an impactful difference in people's lives.

 

Today is December 18, 2020. I graduated and more than a few tears were shed, but this time it is because I am so sad to leave. Thank you to everyone who helped get me here. Aside from the obvious mentioned above, I've also got to thank (in no particular order):

• Ruth and Larson who encouraged me/brought me study snacks so I wouldn't forget to eat and starve
• My husband, Mike, who has had to deal with an absentee wife and more than his fair share of household chores. He has also had to endure me laughing/complaining about technical things he doesn't understand. 
• Jane, who was more than gracious when I had to cancel some of our weekly hangouts in order to study.
• Diane, who also had to tolerate more than her fair share of my flakiness and still texted me when I'd forget what day/week it was. 

To any of my fellow Tech Elevator graduates who may be reading this: I am so proud of all of you. You have worked so hard and are going off to do amazing things. Please get some well-deserved rest and sleep soundly tonight. I hope we'll still stay in touch.  <3

 

P.S. This isn't the end of this blog. When all is said and done, I'm a writer at heart. Be prepared to hear about side projects, my new job, and general tech stuff. I'll spill all the tea about starting a job fresh out of boot camp and more. Just you wait. ;)

The Final Lecture and Bats Full of Shame

 

The last couple of weeks have been brutal because of Thanksgiving break. The instructors were forced to cram four days worth of lectures into two and its clear many students are feeling stretched thin and bitter towards Vue.js and the timing of those Plymouth colonists. Couldn't they have just waited a few weeks? 

We've spent the last three months attempting to appease angry machines. Hours staring down angry red lines and making meager offerings until someone eventually murmurs, "Oh, I think it liked that..." and we're blessed with part of a working program. 

Perhaps that is why the final day of lecture was my breaking point. We did a review and I got lost almost immediately. Eventually, I turned off my camera and cried. Evidently, I was not very subtle and was quickly joined by my husband and cat who both made several well-intentioned bids at cheering me up. I'll let you guess which one offered to take me out for tacos. 

I insisted on staying put for the rest of the review and penned a depressing message to Brian and Rachelle during one of the breaks about my lack of understanding and fear of the future. I suppose that is one of my strong points: total transparency to the point of idiocy. 

Just kidding about the idiocy part, but I do dislike dishonesty and posturing. My hope is readers can infer from the rest of my blog that I will tell the truth even if it could potentially make me look weak to others. I want to give people a genuine look at what it's like participating in a coding bootcamp and if I were to pretend it was all easy, that would be deception and unhelpful to those who may be deciding whether or not to enroll. 

In an episode of What We Do in the Shadows, Nadja mentions some vampires who failed at hosting an event and permanently transformed themselves into "bats full of shame." I relate to this concept so much, that's the name of my mobile hotspot. While I am unable to transform into a bat, I am really great at sulking/dramatic makeup.

Anyway, after some encouraging messages from my instructors and reaching out to classmates who felt similarly, I was able to shake off the depression and get excited for the final capstone kickoff on Friday. The tacos helped, too. ;)