I’m always trying to hit the right balance between work, life, and coding, and I feel like I’ve been striking a pretty good balance for the past two weeks!

I’ve been hard at work on my Tic Tac Toe game for freeCodeCamp– only slowed a little because I decided to refactor after working on it for nearly a week! I’ll be sharing more about the actual code my next post, when it’s completed- for now the moves the computer makes are pretty predictable, and super easy to beat, so that’s what I’m working on now.

One of the things I like about the hospitality industry is the idea of work experiences (usually called a “stage”- with a soft G, as in the French word- people on a stage are referred to as “stagiaires”) A chef will get in touch with another kitchen and ask if they can come for a stage, which is an exchange: the chef will work for free, and gain skills and knowledge from the hosting kitchen. Generally these are short term- from a couple days up to a week, but there are also a lot of chefs who go to work in world-renowned kitchens for months (without pay!) It can be a really great experience for both sides, and I was offered the job that influenced me the most, and that I’m proudest of, after a stage.

I was hoping that I’d be able to have a similar experience with web development, but it’s proving to be a bit more difficult right off the bat… My lack of experience in web development is what really sets me at a disadvantage when it comes to this kind of thing, and makes it less likely for me to be taken seriously when I contact a studio to ask about a work experience. At this time, I think completing freeCodeCamp’s front-end certificate (and showing off the projects I completed along the way) and contributing to projects on GitHub might be the most effective way to show what I’ve learned so far.

These are the things that have been going through my head this week, and I’d love to hear from people that have gone on short work experiences, or their thoughts on all this.