My journey in CodeWords has been a weird one.
At the start, I wasn't really expecting the course to be unique and fun in a way that engages my brain to think creatively as I was coding.
I was wrong.
The course was hard, at least for me. It was hard enough on the ideation part that really held me back a mile, because the idea is the most important part of the whole design.
I still feel held back by a lot, and it's just that I haven't put in enough brain calories into the course as I would have liked.
The biggest thing that I've learnt about doing this whole ideation thing is that, at the start it's best to follow through with something that you like, and then improve it as you have another "ding" inside your brain.
And yes it may seem obvious, however, when I first heard about the method, in my head it looked like constant improvements until the moon. Much like the curve below. ⬇️
But it was more like this. (Pay attention only to the line.)
I thought that my idea could be improved and moved forward everytime I sit down on my desk and entered "work mode". As you can see form the curve above, that was not the case at all.
I am a person who is always at home almost 90% of my time. As much as I would have liked to go out and explore, 90% of my needed work (not just university) lies in my dorm room.
I've probably had the same daily routine for 2 months, before finally things started to really become chaotic.
For the 2 months of me being in my dorm room for 90% of my waking hours, good ideas haven't been able to come my way. I've even tried to work at my communal space provided, however, nothing much changes after 2-3 weeks doing that.
It was only when I was doing the rest of my work while waiting for my friends to finish eating their noodles, when I did come up with a decent enough final idea for much of my work.
I do not know why this is either, I have yet to come up with a conclusion on how I get good ideas.
And that is probably the main "problem" with my overall journey with CodeWords, and probably with my life in general as well. For the past year being in Melbourne, I've never really gone out into the public that much. I might enjoy my time eating out, however it was not really for experiencing and embracing, though I'd say that going into museums hasn't really been enjoyable for myself as well.
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I'd say that I haven't really improved much in the technical side of coding, as I've already dabbled into coding myself in the past. I never really gotten into the habit of documenting my work, at least for university.
(I apologize to all teachers right now)
Though, I'd say that every class activity that was purely physical i.e. not working with a laptop, was more fun and more educational than doing the coding itself.
Looking back at the activites and the discussions that happened in class, everything seems to support my soft skills rather than my creativity and/or technical skills. (Please don't hold me up on my class attendance 🙏🏻, I apologize for not coming for almost half of the semester)
My time management has been chaotic over these past 2-3 months, yes. However, I was managing through that with really pushing the discipline and work for my assignments.
And there also might be other ways I could've handled my situation, but I did the best I could.