Week nine

I was a nurse for nineteen years and now I am forty-one and I cry about CSS. That's the short version. The long version is that I hurt my back on a ward in Cork in a way that meant I could stand for four hours but not twelve, and twelve is the job, and after a year of trying to make it work I sat in the car park and admitted it wasn't going to. My sister said "you were always good with the computers," which was true in the sense that I was the one on the ward who could make the printer go. On the strength of that I put a chunk of my savings into a sixteen-week bootcamp and here I am at week nine, in a room in Dublin with twenty-three people, the youngest of whom is twenty-four and the oldest of whom is me. Things I've learned so far: One. Nobody in this room can spell "necessary" first time, and it doesn't matter, because the computer tells you. That was a revelation. In nursing the computer doesn't tell you. In nursing you find out eight hours later. Two. I am not the slowest. I thought I would be. I'm not. The lad next to me, Cian, who is twenty-six and has a degree in something, gets the concepts faster than me and then makes a mistake because he didn't read the instructions. I read the instructions. I read the instructions like they're a drug chart. It turns out that's most of the job. Three. Flexbox is the work of a malevolent god. We did a group project in week seven. Four of us building a fake booking site for a fake barber. I got put in charge of what they call the "backend," which as far as I can tell means the part nobody can see and everybody blames. I was terrified. Then we had a meeting, and the meeting was a disaster, because Cian and a girl called Sadhbh wanted to do the whole thing a different way each, and the fourth fella just sat there.

And I found myself doing the thing. The thing I did for nineteen years at handover when two doctors wanted different plans for the same patient. "Right. What does it need to do by Friday. Not what would be nice. What does it need to do." I wrote it on the whiteboard. Three things. We did the three things. We were the only group that demoed something that worked. Sadhbh said afterwards, "Where did you learn to do that?" "Ward 4C." "What's Ward 4C?" "Surgical. Long story." I still cry about CSS. Not the sad kind of crying; the frustrated kind you do in the toilets for ninety seconds and then wash your face and go back. I did that on the ward as well. It doesn't mean anything. It means you care and it's hard. Last night I got the barber's site to send a real email when you book. An actual email, arriving in my actual inbox, that said "Your appointment with Dave is confirmed." Dave doesn't exist. I sat in my kitchen and looked at it for a good while. Then I rang my sister and read it to her, and she said "that's brilliant, what does it do," and I said it sends an email, and she said "the computer sends an email? Is that not what they all do?" and I said yes but this one does it because I told it to. Seven weeks left. There's a careers session on Thursday and I'm told they'll ask what kind of company I want to work for. I've been thinking about it. I'd like one that has a printer nobody can make go.