My first week of Dev Bootcamp is done. This morning we received our first weekly assessment via email. It’s a series of five challenges designed for us to apply things we’ve learned so far, and the DBC staff will use it to gauge how we’re doing. At first glance, it looked daunting. Maybe it’s because I was tired or hadn’t made breakfast for myself yet. Also, I had a handful of core challenges left over from the week that I needed to finish by the end of the weekend. I had another mountain of work looming over me, and there was a long way to go before reaching Mordor. That metaphor was clumsy and embarrassing, but I’m too tired to fix it. Just pretend it was genius.

So there I was, looking at a whole new heap o’ work, so I did the thing any responsible, mature adult would: I went shopping at Target.

This morning, I woke up with the prelude to the hint of a tickle in my throat. Hell no, I thought. I must be dehydrated. There’s no way I’m getting sick. Getting sick is not an option. I haven’t been drinking enough water this week, that’s all. I went into to the kitchen to get some whenever I thought of it, but more often than not, my head had been buried in pair programming challenges. A water bottle, I decided, would solve the problem. If I have water in front of me, I’ll drink it, right? I bought a bottle of multivitamins, too. Water’s great and all that, but I’m not screwing around here. I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, and my body needs to be in top shape.

As a side effect, I’ve lost weight. I’m not sure how much, but I used a skinnier belt notch this morning. It’s probably a combination of my daily hikes up the San Francisco hills between DBC and my apartment, the smaller meals I eat, and the extra energy it takes to learn at this kind of a pace.

I hadn’t considered my body a machine before this week, but now that I’m hyper-aware of the things I put into it and the things I expect it to do, I’ve become more concerned about how it’s running. Verdict: so far, so good. I’m drinking more water now, taking care to eat as well as possible, and taking breaks between long stretches of work.

My walk to Target ended up being constructive for a non-obvious reason. It got me out of the work cycle for a half hour. It was a beautiful morning in San Francisco today. It was nice to get a little air and sun and explore a new corner of the city, and I was surprised by how much it supercharged me. When I climbed back up to the DBC office, my assessment no longer looked daunting. Challenging, absolutely, but I had no doubt I could tackle it.

It’s almost 11 p.m. and I’m about to finish the fifth and final exercise in the assessment. Tomorrow, I’ll wrap up my last few core challenges, read the first two chapters in Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR to the cool kids), and jump into week two. I feel like I’m finding my stride here.