I strive for lifelong self-directed learning. Having two kids under four have kept me busy at home, but I remain determined to improve myself. I am always on the lookout for strategies that I can apply to our testing processes at work. And I continously set personal time aside to keep myself updated on technology. This is why I'm thankful for the Udacity programs. It provides parents, like me, the opportunity to grow their professional skills without spending too much time away from our family. With online learning, I am able to catch up on lessons when the kids are napping or when they're working on their arts and crafts.

I am grateful to be in the web development, intermediate track of the Grow with Google Challenge Scholarship. In this first phase of the scholarship program, participants learn about the (1) benefits of offline first approach in web applications; (2) implementing service workers to create progessive web applications; (3) using indexdb for storing client side structured data; (4) and the various new features of ES6, including classes, sets, maps, and proxies. Top students in Phase 1 of the Grow with Google's scholarship program will earn full scholarships to Udacity's Mobile Web Specialist Nanodegree Program.

I am hoping that this course would not only help me in developing mobile web applications but that it would further my knowledge of testing web-based applications, as well.