Dam authentication is INTENSE! There’s definitely a general pattern that might be easy to memorize given some repetition, but the underlying concepts are awesome. From assigning session tokens, to hashing passwords, the design almost seems intuitive in how to websites should properly protect your information. There’s A LOT of stuff that’s going on though, and I can see how Assessment 4 can be overwhelming. There’s a lot of files you need to balance, especially when you’re dealing with files going from the user, to the router, to the controller, to the model, then database, back to the model, back to the controller, to the views, back to the controller, and finally back to the user. That’s a lot of steps to remember while going through the code and making sure you’ve hit every step, every method, every form, etc.

My study plan for this is to do the practice test as many times as I can, though as I said before, it’s fairly nerve wracking that, that has been my study plan the past two assessments, and I didn’t perform as well as I would have liked. However, after talking with my pod leader/TA, he definitely ensured me that brute memorization is the way to go with this assessment, and the magical number that represents the minimum times to do the assessment is 8. I’m shooting for doing the assessment practice at least two times a day, three times a day on the weekends, four if I can get it down to under and hour.That would put me in between 10 and 14 times before Tuesday… maybe one more for good luck Tuesday morning before the assessment. I’m not sure, that’s how nervous I am with this assessment.

Anyways, it’s currently study hall as I’m writing this blog, so for the rest of the time, I’m gonna give the assessment prep a crack at it. Wish me luck! I’ll need it.