Week 4 — Complete!

Recently I wrapped up week 4 of Hack Reactor Remote. It presented a moment to reflect on the last month or so. During week 1 we had some one on one time with senior students. One piece of advice kept coming up.

Week 4 is rough.

That was the general consensus that we got.

Moving into week 3 I started to feel the steepness of the slope increase. ∆Y was increasing faster than ∆X. I honestly had a hard time thinking week 4 would be much harder.

To put some perspective on it, I’ve worked at super demanding, high paced companies. There were stretches where I clocked 80–100 hour weeks for months straight. I’ve sacrificed sleep, health, and so much more in the pursuit of work. On multiple occasions I’ve pulled all nighters from inside the office in order to put out fires or hit targets. I’m no stranger to hard work and long hours.

But here I was, really starting to feel the burn on week 3. Could week 4 possibly be worse?

Turns out yes.

Week 4 has been the hardest week so far. Pretty much this was the week when push comes to shove. We worked on the entire stack, and this has the effect of magnifying anything you didn’t fully understand.

The crazy thing is, because of all this, the end of week 4 was super rewarding. For the first time you start to feel maybe you could actually something together. It might not be easy, but it’s now within reach.

There’s still a long way to go in the program, but I feel like clearing week 4 is a milestone. So to any future Hack Reactor people reading this that happen to be going through week 4, don’t lose hope. Get through this week, it will be worth it!