What is your greatest strength and how do you know?
My greatest strength is my analytical approach to problem solving. I know this because of feedback I have received from others and because it comes up again and again in a variety of situations and areas of my life. When facing a challenge, I tend to break it down into bite size pieces both to understand the problem and to start working through a solution step by step. The Pairin Survey assigned me the Top Thinking Style of Objective-Analytical and the Top EQ Competency of Cool, Calm, and Collected which both align with what I consider to be my greatest strength.
How do you work best?
I work best by having the opportunity to first approach something by myself and do my own research before seeking help and guidance from others. In school, I find it immensely helpful to read over the material before a lecture, rather than having my first exposure to a subject be presented to me at the pace of an instructor. This gives me a chance to proactively develop my own framework and understanding and then fill that in with the details. I think there is also an element of social anxiety when learning around others. I sould also say I work best in an environment free of distractions and with a cup of tea.
What is your greatest area of improvement?
My greatest area of improvement is confidence in my skills and my ability to convey and communicate my strengths. I tend to fall into self-doubt and let others take the lead on projects. As I learn material, I want to focus on developing a deeper understanding of it. I think this can be accomplished by applying things I learn to a variety of tasks and focusing on the skill of problem solving over memorizing every single line of code. I've found that explaining things to other students is a great way to practice and develop confidence in my understanding of a subject.
How do you hope to maximize your strengths for your new career in software development?
I hope to maximize my strengths by applying my skills in analytical thinking and composure under pressure to the ongoing learning and problem solving involved in a career in software development. I will do this through continuing to develop and apply my strengths to each problem. Furthermore, I will learn how to communicate these skills and be more confident in my abilities. I think this especially applies to the challenges in the field of software development.
How might knowing about your strengths and working preferences benefit you as a software developer?
Knowing your strengths is highly beneficial in any professional setting because you know what you bring to a team or a project. This can help you exploit your strengths as well as focus on improving your weaknesses. You also need to know your working preferences so that you can maximize your productivity and advocate for your needs for things like working remotely a few days a week. Your working preferences might also highly influence your job search so that you can find a company that will be a good fit for you.
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?
To manage my learning process, I mostly focus on time management by minimizing distractions, having frequent but brief breaks, and breaking down material into bite sized chunks. This is sucessful when I can stay on top of things but when I get behind things can become overwhelming very quickly. The main challenges I have are not having enough time or energy to devote towards learning. I think I do have enough time, but it's more about using that time extremely wisely and treating my time like the precious resource it is.
How do Sierra's and Coate's material relate to your current process for learning?
Coate's article and Sierra's talk relate immensely to my learning process. Coate discusses his experiences with learning a foreign language and how he can't really pinpoint when he made noticeable progress, it just kind of happened. Similarly, Sierra's main suggestion for learning is to expose yourself to a very large amount (hundreds) of high-quality examples. This relates to my learning process, because I want to focus on using my time as efficiently as possible which is probably going to be focusing on small pieces of information and working through a plethora of examples of that specific subject. This can speed up the process of learning and limit the amount of bad habits or misconceptions you pick up. Furthermore, Sierra suggests revisiting skills that have become automatic to you to see if there are new methods you can adopt that will make you more efficient. I'm sure there are a ton of things that I could be doing more efficiently and I hope to take some time to identify and improve upon these things.
What role does your emotional state of mind play in your learning? How do your successes and failures at learning affect your emotional state?
My emotional state has a huge effect on my learning. To begin, when I'm feeling stressed or upset about anything, I become unmotivated and find it difficult to force myself to be productive. I just want to endulge in some guilty pleasure. This is often caused by everyday challenges in all aspects of my life but can also be triggered by a failure when trying to learn something. When I am trying to learn and encounter something that seems so over my head it feels impossible, it is very easy to slip into negative thinking. But it's important to just keep trying to approach the problem in different ways and consult different resources as well as taking a break and coming back to it with fresh eyes. On the other hand, successes in learning are immensely rewarding and I think it's important to acknowlege and celebrate even little wins.
How will you prepare yourself to be at your best with your learning process while at Turing?
To set myself up for sucess at Turing, I will make sure I'm caught up on my personal to-do list to minimize outside distractions that might otherwise come up. Also, I will continue to practice coding on a nearly daily basis -- I think six days a week will work well for me. With this practice, I will focus on learning small skills deeply rather than getting overwhelmed by the vastness of what I don't know. I think this will keep me in the best mindset to be prepared to hit the ground running and maintain a positive attitude.