Frustration to the extreme

I am getting extremely frustrated with the content in this course. I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but I feel like we're going way too fast in terms of content and I'm getting serious information overload. I am not able to absorb old material before something new is introduced and that's becoming a serious problem for me. I know of at least 2 other students whom I regularly talk to that also feel this way. I don't understand why so much is packed into a 7 week course? It wouldn't be so bad if it was just doing the HW/Labs, but throwing a group project on top just seems silly to me. We don't even know the material and now we have to use it in a project??? Doesn't make sense to me... /endRant

Homework assignments

I'm finding that I really enjoy doing homework assignments when they involve modifying a current file (ie. the assignments with todo's). It's much easier to follow the code that's already there and assess what needs to be done. I find it much more difficult when we have to start from scratch because it just seems like it's much more difficult to wrap my head around what needs to be done. I feel like I learn more with the todo assignments because I'm able to focus on specific parts of an assignment and absorb that part as opposed to having to create a python file from scratch.

One thing I'm currently trying to figure out is how to use an or operand with a string. I keep getting an error everything I try to use "|" with a string. I figured out that my code is correct because I tried it with one string instead of all 5, but if I try to do more then one then I get an error.

New to Python

I'm new to Python since I tested out of SI 502 so it's somewhat new to me. I know Java and C# so I'm familiar with programming but have no experience reading in data and using code to change the data. I'm finding that some of the functions seem really obvious but I wouldn't think I'd be able to use them because I'm still in the mindset of Java where rules are much more stringent. Things like requiring your variables to be defined and spacing not mattering are what I'm used to, so changing my mindset is a bit of an adjustment. Either way, I love learning new things, and I especially like coding so I'm looking forward to this challenge and hope I don't get confused too much. It seems like there is quite a few resources out there to help me learn what I need/want to learn so I'm going to dive in head first.