CSSI Day 18: Birthday Magic?

Do you believe in birthday magic? I think I might after the magic that was today. I woke up this morning with only one goal in mind: finish our project at a reasonable hour today. After the results of yesterday's work, I wasn't very optimistic about this goal, but I was determined to enjoy my birthday and not let the stress get to me. By some source of magic or another, we were able to solve all of the problems from the day before and a few more by the end of the day, finishing our game! 

My team worked fantastically well today, supporting each other when necessary and otherwise each working on our own components. Because of the way we coordinated it, there weren't many problems with concatenating our separate coding together, which has been a relief throughout this entire process. Today, I was really happy that I was able to reinforce and learn more about Javascript, my least familiar programming language, while coding and debugging our application. I handled a lot of data transfer between server-side event handlers and browser-side Javascript functions today, meaning that I got to code quite a bit in both languages.

After lunch, we had a presentation about how to deliver presentations effectively (ahead of our final project presentations tomorrow)! After discussing some tips about engaging presentations, we broke off into smaller groups to practice speaking in front of an audience. I can still remember when the very thought of public speaking was a nightmare to me; over the years, however, I've grown in becoming more comfortable talking to crowds. Regardless, the practice that we did was really beneficial because I got a lot of feedback into things that sometimes I didn't even realize I was doing. I felt that the workshop really helped us get ready for our presentations tomorrow.

Then, I was presented with a cake and card from the CSSI team! It was so lovely of them and I felt so grateful to be able to celebrate my birthday at Google, with all my fellow CSSIers. 

Cake! Two candles to represent 18? Why not.

As if there wasn't enough icing on the aforementioned cake, we also found out today that our team won the scavenger hunt from Seattle Saturday! The prize was an awesome bag filled with various Google goodies:

Fruits of our scavenger hunt labour = excitement!

All in all, my 18th birthday ranks high up in the list of "most awesome birthdays"; after all, just being here at CSSI for the past weeks have been an amazing experience that I will never forget. It's hard to believe that we'll be back home in less than three days... However, first off it's time for final presentations on our projects tomorrow. I'm really interested in seeing what everyone came up with, as well as debuting our finished game!