# Weekly Notes: What to Write You write one short note a week, in your course repo, at `oim3690/logs/wk01.md` through `wk14.md`. It takes a few minutes and it is the one thing in this course that runs every week, whatever else you happen to be building. The note has four standing prompts: - What you worked on - What gave you trouble, and where you are still stuck - Something new you picked up, in class or anywhere else - Something you noticed about working with AI this week Some weeks I will ask for something specific instead, tied to what actually happened in the room. ## The one rule Write what actually happened. A blank line beats an invented one. A note that says "worked on the site, learned CSS, AI was helpful" is worth nothing to you in December, and it is obvious from a distance. A note that says "spent 40 minutes on a footer that would not stay at the bottom, turns out I had two elements fighting for the same space" is worth reading a year from now. ## Ideas when a prompt feels empty You do not need all of these. They are here for the weeks when you look at a heading and go blank. ### On what you built - What you built, fixed, or broke - The thing that took far longer than you expected, and why - A decision you made, and the option you turned down - Something you shipped without fully understanding, and what you plan to do about it ### On what changed for you - The moment it clicked: something you could not do last week and can do now - A question you still cannot answer - Something you can use but could not explain out loud - A bug that is still open ### On other people's work - Something you took from a classmate's project - A site, a repo, or a piece of code worth stealing an idea from - A question someone asked in class that you are still thinking about - A tool or an idea from a lightning talk that you would try, with its link. Name the idea and leave out who gave the talk, because your repository is public. ### On working with AI - A prompt that worked far better than your first attempt, and what you changed - Something the AI produced that you rewrote or threw away, with the commit - Something it got right that surprised you - A moment you could not tell whether the output was correct ### On the week itself - How the week actually felt - A link worth keeping - What you want to try next week ## Format Write it in Markdown, with headings and bullets. GitHub renders the file on the page, so a note with no formatting is a wall of text. A starting file is on the course site: [weekly-log.md](https://oim3690.github.io/downloads/weekly-log.md). ## How it is checked Checkpoints look for the file, on time, with real content in it. Notes are checked by the commit date, so a week's note written three weeks later is not a note about that week. Write it before you leave on Thursday, or that evening at the latest.