Author: Anika2317 Team: Anika, Adya, and Jailene

The Poway Recovery Center

This trimester, my team built a website for the Poway Recovery Center, which supports people affected by dependency disorders. Someone using our site may be having a very hard week, so I learned that code for real people has to be correct, predictable, and gentle.

Poway Recovery Center home page

I worked on the home page, the resource hub, a program quiz, and the Recovery Tracker. Next, we need the center’s feedback, since its community should guide what we keep.

Working as a Team

The best part of this project was building it with Adya and Jailene. None of us could have made the whole site alone.

Teammate What they brought
Adya Led us as Scrum Master and built most of the backend
Jailene Designed our logo and organized our planning and diagrams
Me Built the pages and tools people use directly

One of Jailene’s diagrams shows how an idea can move through a team project:

flowchart LR
    A[" Parking Lot "] --> B[" To Do "]
    B --> C[" In Progress "]
    C --> D[" In Review "]
    D --> E[" Done "]

Our work also built on each other’s. I wrote the first Reflection Wall, and Adya later connected it to the backend.

What Went Well What I Want to Improve
We each owned part of the project Learning more of Adya’s backend
We could work at the same time Keeping our board up to date
We planned together in GitHub issues Clearer commit messages for my team

Night at the Museum

At Night at the Museum, our team talked about our website, and I talked to Damon about what we built for the center.

Homework

Each homework had its own theme, which made the concepts easier for me to picture.

Homework What I did What I took from it
Variables Modeled a game’s settings and score A Boolean fits a yes/no choice and can’t be misspelled
Data Abstractions Tracked stars across game levels One list beats 100 separate variables
Strings Pulled hidden words out of a transmission Slicing is all about getting the index right
Booleans Validated auto parts records Check the data before trusting it
Conditionals Built a scam message checker “It runs” isn’t the same as testing every branch
Iterations Scanned wildfire alerts by zone A loop can skip items or stop early
Developing Algorithms Made a supply closet restock report Turn the plan into steps before coding
Algorithmic Efficiency Compared ways to find a library book Binary search takes far fewer checks, but needs a sorted list
SASS and HTML Practiced containers, grids, buttons, inputs, and toggles These became the skills I used to style our site

My buttons homework linked to mental health resources, and my inputs homework used a search bar for resources. Those felt close to the kind of work I was doing for the center.

My homework tended to bunch up right before it was due, so I want to spread it out more.

What the MCQ Taught Me

I scored 55/66 (83%) on my 2018 practice MCQ. My concepts are fairly solid, but tracing code step by step is my weak spot.

xychart-beta
    title "Performance by Big Idea (%)"
    x-axis ["1: Creative Dev", "2: Data", "3: Algorithms", "4: Systems", "5: Impact"]
    y-axis "Percent correct" 0 --> 100
    bar [80, 81, 79, 75, 100]

Doing well on homework didn’t always carry over to the exam, so I want to keep practicing after each lesson. I haven’t retaken a practice exam yet. My goal is to get Algorithms and Programming above 85% next time.

Glows and Grows

Glows Grows
Building for a real organization Tracing code without running it
Working with my team Understanding our backend
Connecting homework to our project Spreading out my work

Final Thoughts

A mistake on an exam costs me a point, but a mistake on this site could affect someone who needs help. That changed how I think about testing and wording. I’m proud of what Adya, Jailene, and I built together.