My greatest strength is intuitively identifying the overarching purpose of why we are all here. I feel a higher calling for how we can conduct ourselves.
I have a strong belief that we are all walking our own paths. At every moment that our paths intersect we can find opportunities to be the catalyst for greater transformation.
I know that I can't rely on my intuition for everything so I challenge myself to think across abstract and concrete domains and pay attention to details to back up my intuitive processes. That way, I accept that I am in a state of constant transformation and improvement.
It depends on the type of work. I am pretty flexible with work environments but it takes me time to adapt to the work environment. If I don't want to be interrupted I will go and isolate. If we are working collaboratively, I want clear communication and expectations so that I pull my own weight while expecting others to do the same. Ultimately, I work best when I can just work.
My greatest area of improvement has been accepting myself as a person in a constant state of transformation. I learned how to adapt to work in many different work environments.
In the four years at the last restaurant I will ever work at, I held literally every single job position. I started as a dishwasher and ended as one of the floor managers. I trained a lot of workers.
I have additional experience in coaching and teaching in classroom settings for students from kindergarten through high school and even adults older than me.
My path has lead me to value learning and teaching myself so that I can guide others while we are meeting as they go along their path.
I want to maximize:
- learning the contexts of things being learned
- teaching to learn and collaborating with others
- communicating my needs so that I don't get left behind
- be aware of others' concerns and needs as well
I'm going to do it by:
- finding extra readings "adjacent" to the material
- creating enough of my own documentation to reference
- setting up a support network (?)
- being engaged in the community that I work with
I have a high affinity to learning languages. It directly translates to software development because there are tons of programming languages and frameworks to work with. I'm highly confident that the same techniques of learning another natural language correlate well with programming.
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?
When I look back at the habits that helped me succeed as a student in the past, it's pretty boring. Read the material and re-read it. Take notes, and read and re-read notes. Drill with flashcards - chunk them up by "section" and go down a checklist of "sections." Host study groups. Write down due dates several days before the work is due, not just on the due date.
It takes mad discipline to buckle down and work and it's totally worth it. What truly helped me go beyond with my learning is understanding the context of what I am studying to see how the "class material" fits into the larger scheme of things.
I'll recant my experience teaching myself how to code in my free time. Sometimes, hitting the books was the last thing that I wanted to do after coming home from a long shift at work. My approach to overcoming that obstacle was studying before work, in the morning. I left home and went to coffeeshops at night where I could zone in on my laptop. I will say for sure that was a big game changer - I could work on code while drinking an endless supply of coffee.
The biggest takeaways for me is recognizing that as a human, I have an unquantifiable potential for growth and learning. Constant immersion is a big factor in learning. Sierra emphasizes a relationship between mastery and effort over time that is reflected in Coates' persistence with the French language.
Says Coates, "the Struggle is the norm. May it ever be thus." I can take that to heart as a learner of multiple foreign languages - Small gains over a long time is where I will find my "self-checks" to see that I really am improving at difficult endeavors.
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 brain can only take on so many demands before going ka-put. Coates talks about managing emotional health and Sierra cites science studies about limited cognitive resources. When I was a student in the past, I was constantly working on the side to have money for tuition, books, food and living. Not only did juggling my work-study balance massively drained my brain, there also weren't enough hours in the week for me to recover!
I have to be highly mentally engaged in order to do the best work. A lot of times I find that emotions can be distracting. For example, if I have negative feelings, that energy drains away at me and is obviously read by other people - it makes them hesitate to interact with me. I find that I have to set my negative feelings aside when I need other people to work with me because I cannot alienate or "scare" them away.
I like being rewarded by my work so it keeps me motivated to strive. Any where that I have failed, I reframe those moments as learning opportunities because usually it's not the end of the world. I try not to be too hard on myself but I might be harder on myself than anyone else can be. I know that true failure is not really an option so the only choice is to strive to succeed.
It all comes down to managing time. I want to be busy working on school and launching my career change.
First, I am addressing the biggest obstacle in my academic career. I am moving back with my family so that I don't have to financially support myself during studies.
Second, I'm going to have a solid bed-time.
Since that naturally opens up more "non-working" hours in my week, I will block out regular, dedicated studying time. I might be spending a lot of time on campus and find opportunities to study in a group.
I want to set small personal goals, like tutoring a classmate or doing X amount of "lightning talks" per module. These goals are mutable.
Finally, I will block out my intermission time to take "breathers."
