So far, all I can comment on from experience is orientation and Sprint 1. Which honestly feels a little disjointed. There's a bunch of software to install and accounts to create, and it's difficult to know if you've got it right. Then you get started on the tasks in Waffle, which are similar to but not necessarily the same as the material in the walkthroughs in the orientation material. I think I've managed to muddle my way through by trying things out and googling any errors I've received, and I suppose that reflects the reality of being a developer, but I have previous IT experience, and those who don't might struggle, especially if they don't feel comfortable asking for help. Also, there are some spelling and grammatical errors in the orientation material, which drive me nuts because I'm pedantic, but more importantly might add unecessary cognitive load for non-native speakers. Because it's on GitHub, I feel like there must be a way to comment on these pages to point out and correct these things, but I don't know how yet. Hopefully, once the structure of the sprints becomes clearer it'll be easier for me and other students to get stuck into the work.
Disjointedness aside, the subject matter is obviously pretty valuable. GitHub is clearly a great tool for creating software, and after a short tutorial on HTML I made a friggin website. Haven't done that before, it's pretty neat.
It's clearly different to what I experienced in my previous career. Lawyers have a reputation for competitiveness that is not entirely undeserved. Even in workplaces that support you asking questions admitting lack of knowledge to other lawyers, you never want to look like you don't know what you're doing in front of a client.
On top of that, lawyers don't really work in teams. You have to communicate and collaborate a lot, but you're almost always the only person with your skillset on your case file - you might work with more junior or senior lawyers, or correspond with clients, experts or other counsel, but I never worked with another lawyer with the same skillset, on the same file, at the same time - lawyers tend to silo off their work from one another. This can be pretty isolating, and I'm looking forward to more collaborative work.
I didn't really have a lot of expectations of EDA apart from that bootcamp would be intense, and that expecation hasn't been tested yet. So no.
Yeah, I think it will be fun. I know from experience that what makes me stressed is a combination of not knowing what to do and not having the time or resources to find out. It doesn't look as though EDA will be like that - the work will undoubtedly be challenging, but nothing looks insurmountable. Even if (when) I'm neck deep in work and struggling with deadlines, ruing the cavalier attitude I had way back in phase 0, I suspect I'll still be doing something, and that's a lot less difficult to cope with that not being able to do anything.