I just watched Shereef's Fireside Chat. 3 words. I. AM. SO. PUMPED. "So pumped" is actually a single ancient latin word for "single word for so pumped," so it counts. Super ancient. Don't look that up, it's pretty exclusive knowledge. Just trust me. :)

I have to admit, when I first heard of Dev Bootcamp, I thought of a school setting. Sit down, shut up, pay attention, turn your work in, good job, here's your "A." Don't make mistakes! This works for some people, but to create something great, we have to take some risks. And when we take risks, mistakes are gonna happen. The kitchen vs restaurant analogy that was mentioned in the video is an excellent way to put it.

An example of a restaurant approach: In my physics class in high school, I had a friend who was struggling. She understood the principles and everything about physics, she was just supernaturally horrid at math. She could add 2 numbers on a calculator, three times in a row using the same numbers, and come up with a different number each time. Supernatural, I'm telling you. I have no idea how she did it.

Like a good little nerd, I had been reading the manual for my TI-82 and found I could write small programs in it to do some pretty complex stuff. So I made a physics program for her. It'd ask her from a list which variable she was trying to find. Then it'd ask her to enter values for certain other variables, giving her the option to tell it she didn't have that variable, then based on her input it'd give her the answer. It was glorious. It could solve any physics problem the teacher threw at us.

Now the teacher also expected us to show our work, so I warned her, it's only for checking her answers. She understood that, but then she shared it with a few other students who didn't. And they shared it with a few other students who didn't. Before I knew it, all but a few people in the entire class had it. The teacher found out about it (from most students magically getting the right answer out of thin air) and got mad. He banned all programmable calculators from class. (Boy am I glad I never signed my name on that program.)

Anyways, the lesson I learned was don't try to make creative solutions. Just do it the way we show you. I understand the banning calculators thing, but did he have to be so mad about it? I was really excited about the program I had just made, but I didn't want to take credit for it for fear of reprisal. I was already painfully shy as it was. And I sure never embarked on anything like that again during high school.

Don't get me wrong. I am appropriately ashamed for inadvertently helping so many students cheat, but that was never my intention. When I look back at it, I should've designed it so that she would enter in her answer and it would let her know if she was right or not. Maybe I could've learned that lesson back then if they weren't so busy shaming me for attempting to create something like that. Maybe I'm redirecting blame from my guilty conscience. Who knows?

After that, I've been content to just order from the menu because that's the safest way to get my "A." No more cooking for me in high school. Certainly don't touch the knives.

So, I'll definitely have to try to move on from that if I want to make something of myself here. And to be honest, I'm excited to try! Everyone makes mistakes, and that means it's ok for me to, too. And it's not the end of the world if someone calls me out on a mistake. So hand me those chef knives, I'm gonna make some mistakes!...

... That probably could've been worded better.