CTP Skill Center

Today we went over the general concepts of the Weekly Projects and what was expected to me. Then I spent the rest of the day working on the Project Inception Lab, which I documented on OSticket. Though they’re rudimentary, it was fun to create little images with helpful boxes and arrows so my notes can be followed more efficiently.

Awesome day of work. I really appreciate Mike for taking us through cover letters today as that is a big worry for me every time. When I was younger I would have Indeed or some other generator create cover letters for me that no longer feel quality as what we were able to produce today. The documents provided in class were exceptional as well as Mike’s help in pushing us all forward (not rushed or embarrassed, genuine outlooks for our improvement). At the end of class he mentioned we have another spreadsheet assignment tomorrow and I became so jittery writing this blog post and my attention went straight to excitement. Thank everyone for the aid! You are all awesome and a great team!!!

Today I got through the middle of the week with a lot less stress and fewer technology hiccups. My phone app for Homebase worked, so I guess I will be clocking in/out with that method instead of the old way on the computer. My typing scores today were on par with my recent practice and improvements.

The major assignment today, which took up most of class time, was the Sunshine Express Cover Letter assignment. The task was to find an approachable position on Indeed that I was mostly qualified for and to follow the step by step instructions covering the format and content of the letter.

I found a job that interested me called Administrative Support Coordinator I at Cal State East Bay. There was a lot in the job posting that indicated they may hire somebody directly associated with the campus, because of special working knowledge and experience directly related to the schools STEM lab department. However, I possessed most of the required and minimum qualifications for the job in its entirety.

The cover letter language was not easy to flesh out, particularly the two paragraphs related to “my qualifications” versus “my interest in this position.” I did my best and worked with Antonio, reading each other’s letters and providing feedback. I’m looking forward to working on more cover letters in the future and improving my career positioning.

Today, I unfortunately had to join the session late due to a very difficult situation that was completely beyond my control. I did follow the call-out procedure, so it won’t count against me, but I still hate missing class time, and I hope I never have to do it again. Anyway, I was able to make up the Meeting Deadlines assignment today, and I got through a lot of the Cover Letter assignment as well.

9 2 2026

Today we started class with about 15 minutes of typing practice and posted our scores in the chat. Then we spent the rest of the time working on the Sunshine Express cover letter and how to make an effective one to get a feel like if we were applying for a job. I feel better now that I can write and draft an effective cover letter for when I apply for jobs in the future. I wanted to thank Alex and Mike for their feedback on my first draft of the cover letter and for making it better with revisions.

Blah, blah, blah. Example writing. I did these things and then I practiced using WordPress and all the cool features. Blah, blah, blah. Example writing. I did these things and then I practiced using WordPress and all the cool features.

September 2, 2026: Today, I did some assignments including the Deadline Reminders and the Sunshine Express Cover Letter.

Felt alright in class today. I started off pretty positive and crumbled more towards the end. I dearly appreciated Marc helping me with the extra credit portion of the spreadsheet because I almost gave up and just dropped it when my numbers were not rounding up at all. I’m also proud of myself for asking the question for aid.

I felt a bit down towards entering into blog time today because we were able to view some of our coworkers’ (my awesome Bootcamp Alumni coworkers) spreadsheets. I never knew we were able to be so creative and expressive with our spreadsheets. In my head, I have simply been trying to meet what I have experienced in work (and learned years ago) as “professional spreadsheets-” which honestly? Usually lack in creativity. I was a bit disgruntled with myself because designing the spreadsheets is one of my favorite things to do, and I felt I did not provide quality work today. I now learned it is okay to get creative in designing a spreadsheet for myself. Plus, as long as my boss and other employees are accepting of it? It is welcome! Thank you, Alex, Sam, and Mike, for the lesson in not letting work bore me out of a job or remove my space for creativity! #LifeLessons

Firstly, I learned about the expected weekly tasks (clocking in and out of Homebase, “What I did today,” the weekly tech article, and Skillsoft). Then, I set up Google Calendar reminders for all of them so that I have an extra safety net just in case. After that, I set up Wireguard and Remote Desktop Connection and logged onto the remote computer I’ll be using for my labs. And then I got access to osTicket and created my first ticket. To round out the day I talked with Jose about why Bitdefender is better than Google passwords. This led to ideas about possible tech articles about how AI is changing security I could research and share in the future.

Today was hectic as I had to take a 2 hour trip into the city first thing in the morning. I made it to class on time, but I was exhausted from my appointment. On top of that, I had endless struggles logging into HomeBase. Eventually, on Tiye’s suggestion we tried the phone app to bypass some of the problems I was experiencing with my computer. I finally logged in about an hour late and so far, it works.

I had finished my two formatting assignments yesterday, so at least I wasn’t worried about keeping up with the assignment for today. On the schedule was the Girl Scout Cookies Google Sheets assignment, where we had an order from about 15 fictitious people over the assortment of six flavors they chose from. The purpose of the exercise was to organize the data (enter each data point), and find the totals using SUM formulas.

I quickly set up the page with the formulas, but when I got to the second portion of the exercise, I noticed the changes in data showed that not all my formulas were working. It was cool to see the mistake that I made a couple times with the SUM function and correct the formulas sometimes with fixed cell annotation ‘$’ to get everything working. I also did some web searching for cookie images to give my spreadsheet some functional flair.