Week 8
Kicking it Remote 
This week I had my first virtual class session. Strangely enough, I felt more connected to my classmates in this virtual class session than I did with them in a physical classroom. It’s awe-inspiring to see our community come together and adapt so quickly to a new reality. As the COVID-19 virus continues to spread, and quarantine-like measures go into effect, life has been rapidly changing. It’s definitely a new ball game with a lot of firsts.
- First-time I went to the grocery store to see all the shelves completely empty.
- First-time I saw skyrocketed prices for hand sanitizers and disinfectant wipes/sprays.
- First-time I saw a bus-driver with a mask and gloves on.
- First-time I had a synchronous virtual class session.
- First-time I had an asynchronous class session.
- First-time I explored video/voice calls.
- First-time (in a long time) that I’ve spent so much time with my family.
…The list goes on
While some of these firsts have been rather unnerving, others have been new and exciting. Sometimes we need a reason to try new things, and I must say, I do see a lot of benefits to video calls (and even to the archaic phone call).
In Four Weeks From Now…
In four weeks from now I think that I will be fully adjusted to my new schuedule. I expect to persevere from the challenges brought upon by modified curriculums and distractions at home by then. I also expect to work out new virtual meetings with my peers to keep my interview skills sharp. I believe that things will be a lot calmer within the next month, as everyone else adapts to social-distancing and the fears of COVID-19 simmer-down. I also predict that the grocery stores will be fully-stocked 
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In Eight Weeks From Now .
In eight weeks from now I believe that life will reflect everyday normalcy. I will be looking forward to my summer internship and welcoming in the warm months (with caution). Life goes on. By then, I am sure that I would’ve experienced an amazing virtual semester that allowed me to learn and grow in ways that I couldn’t have imagined without the challenges brought upon by this pandemic. Thinking about eight weeks from now gives me a newfound sense of optimisim. Can’t wait to see what I learn about myself.
$ cd Next.js
$ git log --reverse
commit message Friday March 20 2020 1:00: 
New Challenges to Keep in Mind. Our team met virtually over Skype for the first time today. Among other things, like determining if this method was viable for future group collaborations, we discussed where we were in the Next.js project. We originally chose this project knowing that it required us to lean on each other to learn, read and use JavaScript. Switching our meetings to voice calls definetly puts a strain on our original ambitions and changes how we share information between us moving forward. It’s been a few chaotic days and the situation is rapidly changing the priorities I have to my family. That being said, I hope to find a balance between my new class schedule, distractions at home, and sustaining life in the upcoming weeks.
Team Work Makes the Dream Work. We talked for a few hours as a team, trying to decipher what we actually had to offer the Next.js project right now, and what we needed to learn to be able to offer more towards the project in the future. My teammates have been super amazing and active in this process. They go out of their way to share resources, and actually learn more about the project to contribute to it. They have inspired me to devote even more time towards this project. The effort that they have put into the project so far should not go unnoticed or unappreciated. They have dedicated hours of their time just to know the basics of JavaScript, and we all still have hours more to go in order to fully understand Next.js before we can make meaningful contributions.
Even Issues Have Issues. The Next.js community is very active, so issues with “simpler” solutions are introduced and solved within the span of a few hours. We discussed as a team some issues we found that might be up our alley (see week 7 post and Liulanz’s blog. Yet, even these issues require some background crash course on a few other tools. An alternative to issue-solving that we’ve explored as a team is to contribute one example Next.js project implementation towards the product’s examples page. This is a BIG goal and we still have several steps to take before we get here (such as determining what kind of example projects we can contribute, and how to make complex example projects using Next.js). While this is an advanced goal, oddly enough, it feels like this is where a beginner might thrive in the project. To fulfill this goal, in addition to completing the awesome tutorial that my teammate shared with us (see week 7 post), I have started the Next.js tutorial and have begun to read up on the project’s documentation.
‘X’ Should Mark the Spot 
. During our conversation, I also came across the elusive Next.js community page. I have found it hard to locate a lot of information related to the community and the contributing specs for this project. This lack of discovery with the Next.js project has made figuring out how to approach it a bit of an unknown. My team and I are on the mission to fill in a few of the mysterious landmarks on the Contributor’s RoadMap to Next.js.
commit message Sunday March 20 2020 1:00:
I have gotten a lot of emails depicting the latest activity on the Next.js community page. After skimming through it, it occured to me that this could be a great place to introduce myself to the community and pose questions that I have about the project. If things go well, I may even get to answer a few questions. Haven’t interacted with the community yet, but I expect to make it a goal for the end of week 9.
Contributions Made This Week:
This week I had the opportunity to read several of my peer’s blogs. It turns out that there are some really cool and talented people in the class (as if any of my experiences with my peers thus far have led me to believe otherwise). I also made a Wikipedia contribution towards the Cosmological Constant article. Here, I removed an uncited sentence after trying to find validation for it through several reliable sources. After finding information that suggested that the sentence was not proven or known, I removed it.
