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Rachel Humes
Rachel Humes

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The Power of Community: Ruby and Grieving

Today, I finished up Phase 3 at Flatiron School where we learned another language, Ruby, and how to connect the backend with the frontend via Sinatra. I was able to pass the code challenge and knock out a project that I am pretty proud of, thankfully. Thankfully, because during this phase, it wasn't the content that proved to be the most difficult as I initially expected but it was the unexpected death of my father.

When I got the phone call on that Sunday morning, I felt gutted. I had a code challenge that Thursday but my motivation to get anything done immediately vanished. Writing a single line of code seemed impossible. I told my cohort the news and that I probably wouldn't be at school that week and I was contemplating whether I could even continue this program.

However, it was then I realized how special my community is at Flatiron School. The support I received from them while grieving is something that I will forever be grateful for and after a couple of days being at home and unbelievably sad, I realized I needed to be at school and around their energy to push me to get to the finish line of this phase. So for the rest of the week we all had many study sessions together to make sure that not just me but everyone made it to the next phase together and I am happy to say that we did.

Although, it's going to take awhile for me to feel okay again, I have a great community around me and most importantly, I know my father would want me to continue to pursue my dreams and would be proud of the progress I have made. So this one is for you, dad.

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Ben Merryman

So sorry for your loss, keep it up! (east-se-103122-a)