Tag Archives: drama

A Sigh of Relief

It loomed on the horizon since the beginning of the semester. In the misty fog of deep sea waters, a mysterious indistinct other sat and waited for our ships to arrive. There was no turning back, no leaving the waters, no retreat. Our ships moved incessantly in the waves toward this impending other.

The curious entity sat and waited for us. It watched us as we learned, as we battled smaller enemies, and perfected our crafts. Every Codeacadmey lesson, every three-hour class session, and every analysis post — it just observed. It was if this entity knew it would be the last thing standing in our way before freedom.

And even as we learned, as we won smaller battles, and as we worked toward perfection — it felt as if this inscrutable being would still have us beat. As we inevitably inched closer and closer we could see the monster for what it truly was. Endless lines of code, front-end & back-end capabilities, widgets, modifications, MAMP, and original content — we were toast. All hope felt lost.

Days passed with no word from the mainland. We were all alone. The biggest battle we faced was quickly approaching. Food and water supplies were running low. And then it came. A message from the mainland. A sigh of relief. Aid was being sent, we were going to beat this thing! We could do it! In just the nick of time, we would be equipped with everything we needed.

The message you ask? It read:

“The website final project will consist more of modifying existing themes and code, rather than creating a new theme entirely from scratch.”

An Uphill Battle

It is no secret that the gallery assignment was a tough one. The entire class — not an exaggeration — struggled with completing it. So what is the gallery assignment, anyway? Our class was tasked with creating a homepage (easy-peasy) that contained a slideshow of photos (not so easy-peasy). The HTML portion of this assignment was like a walk in the park. A few brackets here, a heading there, and throw some divs in the mix — you’re good to go. The CSS was a little tougher. Figuring out the exact numbers I need for “top” & “width” (what the heck is auto??) & trying to decide if my position should be relative or absolute probably took me a solid two hours. But, CSS turned out to be no match for the evil-two-headed-monster that is JavaScript & jQuery. Missing class didn’t help, but I think even if I were there I would have still had issues. Dollar signs, squiggly brackets, and commands that didn’t make sense to my human brain — all hope felt lost.

I tried, tried, and tried again to understand how to make it work. The internet was helpful, but also confusing. Every source had a different way of doing a slideshow, so there were no basic commands I could turn to. I was plugging and chugging in different things from W3 schools, Youtube, Wired, and some smaller sketchier sites. I spent hours trying to make it make sense. I left and came back. Still nothing. I left again and came back again, and still nothing.

It just didn’t work.

So how does my tale end? I eventually gave up. I plugged in an automatic slideshow from W3 schools and begged for forgiveness in the /* comments */. It wasn’t a proud moment.

Still, all was not lost. We took the time in the class period following the assignment to really dive into how to do it. All was explained, untangled, unmangled, and demystified. For now, the battle was won and our men could return home.

But, whispers lingered in the air of a more terrifying conquest looming in the near distance. The natives call it: “A whole entire website, like seriously.” I fear what is to come, will my men survive?