What is your greatest strength and how do you know?
My biggest strength is my ability to empathize with people and to use my flexability and adaptibility to approach them in a way that works well for us both. In my previous work settings I have worked with people with developmental disabilities, and I worked in fraud prevention/collections in a Credit Union. I find when you are working with people that if you can understand where someone is coming from (ie embarassed, angry, scared) you can adjust your approach so that you can communicate effectively.
How do you work best?
Initially, I do best when I can explain to me what the expectations are for the task that we are trying to accomplish. It is extremely helpful if I can work side by side with someone who can show me how they complete the task. After I have a grasp on the situation I do well working independently. I like to try to work through any complications on my own however it is nice to have moderate support to nudge me in the right direction. Once I can perform the required task I just need to repeat the process until it becomes habit.
What is your greatest area of improvement?
My "strongest driver" on the Parin survey was "microscope". According to the survey "I take on responsibility, ask for little and value others a lot. I'm quick to see (and likely to magnify) my imperfections." I feel like that is a pretty solid representation of who I am. I believe that I need to improve my self-confidence and boundaries. When it comes to working I have trouble saying no. I tend to take on more than my share of the responsibilities without asking for help from others, which can lead to resentment and frustration.
How do you hope to maximize your strengths for your new career in software development?
According to my survey I am good at empathizing, I have good selfawareness, and I am felxible and adaptive. Again I feel as though that is a good representation of who I am. I believe that my ability to empathize and my flexability will be helpful when working on group projects as it will help to communicate with my teammates. I believe that my ability to empathize will also help when creating software because considering the perspective of other will add to the user experience. My flexability also allows for me to step into a leadership role when it is needed or step back and support the team when my leadership is not needed.
How might knowing about your strengths and working preferences benefit you as a software developer?
Knowing about my strengths and working preferences will benefit me because it will make me more aware of personality traits that I can improve upon. It also gives me some insite into some potential pitfalls that could get in my way while I am in school. According to my survey my top thinking style is "Imaginative-Inspirational" and that "I'm an informal, 'trial-and-error' processor. I value adventure, heartfelt expression and spontaneity more than details, limitations or long-term focus." This is something that I hope to address before I start school as details and long-term focus seem to be an important part of Turing.
What efforts do you make to manage your learning process? Are these efforts successful? What challenges have inhibited your ability to manage your learning process effectively?
I try my best to minimize distractions so that I can really focus on the task at hand. I am also trying to allow time for breaks and time to decompress so that my brain has time to process the information that I am learning. When I am able to actually do these things it is super helpful for learning. The main problems that I am running into are distractions that throw me off of my intended course (ie the atom .bash_profile command isn't working lets go work on that for an hour.) Remembering to take breaks has also been difficult. (ie I never started my befocused app so I have been working for 1 1/2 hours instead of 25 minutes.)
How do Sierra's and Coate's material relate to your current process for learning?
I can understand how cognitive leaks can disrupt your learning process. Small things like using terminal commands, shortcuts, taking dogs out, and muting Spotify during commercials really does disrupt my ability to learn. I am considering trying to leave the house to do my work as I do not have a quite space here that is codusive to learning. I am going to try to remember to enjoy the good feeling when I get something right because it is easy to feel real dumb right now because all of this is very new to me.
What role does your emotional state of mind play in your learning? How do your successes and failures at learning affect your emotional state?
If I am not in a good place emotionally it is very difficult to focus on learning. This morning I thought that I had deleted my bash_profile and in trying to fix it I became anxious and angry that it wasn't working. Once I was in that mind set it was difficult to focus on finding a solution to the problem. It was even difficult to reach out for help because I was worried about what people would think. I am going to try my best really relish those moments when I get things right.
How will you prepare yourself to be at your best with your learning process while at Turing?
I am really greatful for Mod0 because this will give me an opportunity to work out some of the kinks in my schdule. My wife works from home so I didn't realize how distracting her zoom meetings, pairing, and general pesence would be to me. I am probably going to pay for Spotify premium because even little annoyances like commercials or muting commercials can start to weigh on you through out the day. I am also going to be better about taking scheduled breaks, scheduling time for me and celebrating my wins (even small ones).