data management foundations (C175) experience; halfway point musings
a short, simple course, but it's essential to understand the upcoming topics
I did not bother writing a log for this course simply because it was just… easy. I used Notion enough to grasp the idea of relations, and with mind-mapping, it was simple for me to understand the various relational models that were introduced. A time before, I used to be afraid of databases just by how they looked. It’s just a whole bunch of stuff; how could you not be overwhelmed by what you were seeing? Much of my troubles was with business intelligence since it had a good amount of vocabulary that I did not commit to memory well.
At this time, I have three months and a week left (13 weeks) before the term is over. To be fair, I’m probably going to need to tack on another term. However… if you’ve been hanging around, I am almost up to pace from my original hope for this term: one class finished per eight days. I have 21 courses to go through and I’ve finished the seventh one today. A term is six months, and then you start with about 25 weeks (almost half a year, or 175-180 days). If you divide it evenly in terms of time, that’s about eight and one-thirds of a day per course. Of course, if you did eight days maximum per course you could shave off about ten days off of 180 days.
I’m keeping track of my degree progression in multiple places. I have an Excel spreadsheet that someone else made that also calculates percent finished, the maximum number of days you can spend according to what classes you plan to take in a term, etc. Here’s a screenshot from my Notion page:
Though I’m not technically at the halfway point just yet as of writing, I wanted to reassess my trajectory. The Excel spreadsheet I have reflects something similar (by marking which ones I want to complete in this term). With that, I have about two weeks to finish each course. I think I will be able to do that. I’m comfortable with the data structures for programming so I may just need to focus on the algorithms part, but I am not sure yet.
That is all I wish to do. Six classes (C170, C482, C195, C176, C949 and C950). However, three of them have a performance assessment, which means that there is a project attached. This needs turnaround time for receiving feedback. So perhaps, I should work to make sure the projects meet requirements on the first try, and then submit (you know, get things right the first time).
My plan is that, if I can’t finish all six, to reassess after taking the C176 OA (which is CompTIA’s Project+). If I have like two or three weeks left with C949 (DSA1), I’ll do that and then save the rest of the classes for the next term.
I can’t believe that it’s almost February already. This month has gone by so fast! I am planning to go on a weeklong trip in early February though, so I hope I can progress through the material comfortably. Other than that, I think this path is looking good so far. If I only get to finish C949 by the end of April (when my term ends), I’ll have, in the next term, about twenty days to finish each class (there’d be nine left). I doubt I’ll actually need all that time to go through, but it is definitely less stressful. I will need to look for funding for the second term (maybe I’ll take a term break for a month and work full time at my boba job?) (or I could get lucky with fetching an internship). We’ll see how it goes.
Until then,
~ Your friendly goblin