It's been difficult completing week 3 of the precourse in depth as there were a lot of fiddly and time-consuming exercises, yet so little time to do them all. I had to do most of the work at the weekend, but by then I was nursing one hell of a hangover from my leaving do, and every line of code was a blurry struggle to write.

We covered recursion and a bit of blocks/procs/yielding, but anything that requires putting one thing into another thing and then that thing into another thing, really baffles me. I just about managed to scrape a green tick on my submitted answers the night before the deadline, and only because I skimmed through the exercises that didn't have any RSpec tests (CHEAT!).

I've now officially left my job though (sob). They built me this incredibly beautiful monstrosity so I don't forget about them, and it's working! However, my first day off has been amazing. I... Queen Helene'd my face (that's a face mask to the non-skincare addicts) whilst doing a few paired-programming katas over Screenhero, had a nap, made myself a fish finger sandwich, got a manicure, went shopping, then for a few rounds of badminton, a natter at the pub, and back in time for Game of Thrones. I feel so free!

My point is that I absolutely recommend keeping your schedule free during the precourse weeks. I know the guidelines are to spend about 15 hours a week on the content, which you can technically fit around a 9-5 job, but it is really difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Ever heard of the cheap—fast—quality triangle? Generally speaking, client projects will fit two of those three requirements, whilst the third is sacrificed. For example, a project can be done cheaply and quickly, but will likely have awful quality spaghetti code. If you're still at a full-time job, the precourse definitely feels like that, only it's a work—life—study triangle. RIP lyf 😥