Working with TurtleBlocks

Whew! Where do I start?! I will honestly admit that this week's tech assignment was a very challenging one. I know I had no prior knowledge of coding before this class, but I did not expect it to be this difficult. When our professor first introduced TurtleBlocks to the class, it seemed daunting, but I actually did catch on to the tasks we were instructed to do. As our assignment for this week, which was to write the code for our name in TurtleBlocks, was announced, I was a little scared. Little did I know that fear would turn into apprehension and frustration. When I started trying to work on the assignment, I felt optimistic. I began playing around with the few blocks that I was familiar with. To my disadvantage, I did not know how to use majority of the blocks. I tried using forward, right, backward, and left, but I just could not get the sequence right. I attempted this several times with no relief. This was it, I thought. I will just tell my professor that I tried but I was unable to write the code for my name. I couldn't even get the first letter! I did not know what else to do. I am not sure if this is even allowed, but I reached out to my friend who has a degree in IT. Although he had never worked with TurtleBlocks before, he was kind enough to help me out. We began tackling it together. It took many attempts and perseverance, but we finally figured out a method to the madness! I had to slow down and go step by step playing it to draw each letter. I was finally able to make sense of it. Once I got the first letter, A, I was SO happy!! This motivated me to keep going. I quickly started working on the next letter, Y. However, when I played it, there was a line connecting the A and Y. I wasn't sure how to make a "space" between the letters, so I decided to maybe change the color of that line to white so it would be hidden. Another problem was that the angle was off. I figured out that the whole page was on a X,Y graph, so I had to estimate where each letter would be on the graph and I used that X,Y block as well. This was very helpful! I was able to space my letters out. I also discovered the action block which I used for each letter. So I just plugged that action into each letter's starting block with the angle block too. I also included the text color as well to differentiate the letter colors. I must point out that this assignment took me 2-3 hours to complete. I was very frustrated at first and was very close to giving up. With a little bit of assistance, I found my way and worked at it til I got my final product. Please see my beautiful masterpiece below :)