🤖 Rock's Robotics Learning Journal

"So are you a robotics expert yet?"

A daily learning journal documenting my journey from tutorial-follower to confident robotics engineer.

Why This Exists

To build claimable experience — so I can defend my work in interviews, build on past knowledge without relearning from scratch, and track real growth over time.

Journal Structure

Each daily entry answers 6 questions:

1. What I worked on — what gets me closer to being a robotics engineer today?
2. Biggest lesson — what's the most important thing I learned, and how do I learn more about it?
3. Why I chose this approach — what alternatives did I consider, and why did I do it this way?
4. ELI5 — can I explain this to a 5-year-old? If not, I don't own it yet.
5. Future implementation — what would I build or modify next using this?
6. Why it matters — why is this important in robotics, and what's the current state of the art?

Workflow

1. 5PM reminder fires in Google Calendar
2. Open Claude → start with the two opening questions
3. Claude interviews me, I explain, it becomes the entry
4. Copy markdown → push to GitHub

My Rule

If I'm busy at 5PM, I have max 1 hour to start. daily_upgrade means every day.

Structure

/entries/          → daily markdown entries (YYYY-MM-DD.md)
/monthly-reviews/  → monthly synthesis and pattern spotting
README.md          → this file

The Test

Can I explain what I built, why I made each decision, and reproduce it without a guide?

That's the bar. The journal exists to get me there.