Build on your professional story by thinking about how you're progressing at Turing. Answer the questions below in your own gist to use your StrengthsFinder themes to add to your story:
Write 1-2 paragraphs about your StrengthsFinder themes: How have you seen yourself using these strengths at Turing? Has your understanding of these strengths changed since you first reflected on them? If so, how?
My 5 Strengths:
- Includer
- Future
- Empathy
- Input
- Woo
I was a little skeptical when I first read my strengths, as well as resistant to accept all of them. Throughout module 1 at Turing, I’ve come to see my strengths as more of assets and something that sets me apart from other developers. I think having strengths in “Empathy” and “Includer” will be vital to working on teams in the future. There have been times when I feel like a strength has been more of a liability than an asset, such as my “Input” strength. I have made such huge lists of concepts, things to work on, exercises, advice, and even tabs for readings to go back to that I get really overwhelmed by how much learning there is to do. However, one of the suggestions in the StrengthsFinder was to recognize that just by being collected doesn’t make the items valuable; they need to be shared. I hope to share what I collect more, maybe this means sharing my list of computer shortcuts with new Module 1 students, or finally starting the workings of a technical blog where I can share my thoughts, exercises, and questions I’ve collected. Or maybe starting a Twitter and finally putting some of my long lists of questions out into the world to actually be answered.
The strength I most agree with is my "Woo" strength. I’ve come to recognize that when I can exercise this strength, it boosts my confidence and happiness exponentially in whatever I am doing. I hope to use this new insight in Module 2 by focusing on collaboration and process in my group work more than the technical challenges. I think this will help me become a more confident developer with a unique and strongly developed “woo” skill.
Write a story about your Turing experience so far: When have you struggled? How have you dealt with struggle? When have you succeeded at Turing? How did you accomplish those successes?
My struggles during Mod 1:
- Comparing myself to my classmates, those both I perceive as having skills “above” and “below” mine.
- Feeling like I am taking a backseat during partner projects. Standing up for myself and gaining more control over the direction of the project and the actual implementation of code (i.e. navigating). Leading more.
- Keeping in communication with my partner during projects, even if that means admitting to not finishing what I thought I could do.
- Eliminating distractions during my time at Turing, like personal to-do lists, budgeting and health care
- Not asking enough questions in class or speaking up during group discussions
- Being present in the lesson and when other people are describing their code to me. Not getting caught up in parts I don’t 100% understand and dwelling on it, thus missing the bigger picture or the rest of the explanation.
- Speaking up to other classmates when I don’t agree with something they said.
- Taking risks with trying tools I am unfamiliar with, like GitHub.
- Not worrying about things that are out of my control, like finding an apartment, wishing I could have better and faster skills, other’s reactions.
- Keeping too many to do lists, feeling overwhelmed by them, spending too much time writing them and scheduling my time, not actually DOING.
- Feeling like I cannot let myself take a break, even if that is spending time with other classmates
- Keeping the Turing community and relationships in mind; remembering why I came here in the first place… because of the desire to be a part of such a strong and supportive community.
- Recognizing I only have so much time, mental energy and capacity in one day… keeping the big picture in mind that it is a marathon not a sprint.
- Dealing with stress: expressing my emotional needs, making time to work out because my body really does need it, feeling overwhelmed during timed exercises and freaking out and preventing myself to think logically and calmly through the problem
- Maintainig my relationships with my support system and communicating to them what I need. Balancing home and school.
- Not feeling like my best self at Turing because I’m overwhelmed and stressed.
- Not coding right before bed / in bed.
My moments of success:
- Feeling really lost at the beginnings of projects, but eventually spending enough time with it that I become familiar and understand things. Working through the “unknown.”
- Doing the first project with others and successfully helping each other out and asking questions.
- Getting energy from doing code and discovering how exciting the process of solving problems is.
- Finishing all iterations of all projects, even though they may not be perfect.
- Having a really good first partner project and receiving high scores. Talking to my partner when we had different expectations.
- Seeking support from a friend when struggling with a partner project. Successfully communicating my concerns to a partner and coming up with a solution together.
- Being able to reflect on my freak out during one of the independent assessments and realizing I was confused because of a hash as a parameter which I had not seen before.
- Getting comfortable with various enumerable over break and utilizing them more.
- Getting halfway through iteration 4 on the last independent exercise.
- Becoming better at staying engaged in class and asking questions.
- Being comfortable giving a lightning talk and making people laugh.
- Getting to know most people in my cohort.
I’ve dealt with the struggle by leaning on my support network at home to help me get through, and I think I want to start leaning on the Turing community more as well because I think expressing emotions is one of my strengths I could develop more. I have also reflected a lot when I am struggling, like in my journal, and writing has really helped me feel calmer about my struggles and less stressed. I have also tried to take myself and the Turing 7-month plan less seriously and focus on the bigger picture of becoming a successful developer in the LONG RUN. This has helped me deal with stress or when I am not understanding something.
Answer the question: how does your Turing story end? Create a vision for your future and your career transition into being a junior developer.
I want my Turing story to end coming out as a confident and self-aware junior developer. I think right now, my main struggle is with confidence in the Turing community and technical skill. I want to be able to recognize what I don’t know, but still remain confident in my ability to reach understanding or improve my skill. A strong growth mindset is really what I want to walk away with from Turing and taking into my first job as a developer.
After you practice storytelling in the session, answer this question: What was particularly easy or difficult about telling your story? What are 1-2 steps that you can take to continue to improve your abilities to tell your story, talk about yourself with ease, and examine your strengths?
It was particularly difficult to tell my full story because I felt like my story wasn’t worthy or original enough. These are my own self-doubts that I have about my story which have only festered because I haven’t practiced telling it and thus have not had the chance to be proven wrong.
Steps to take would be to practice sharing my story as often as I can to in order to gauge it’s reception and people’s feedback to it. This will allow me to refine my story to what I actually want it to convey. I can practice sharing my story by telling it to my mentors, others I meet in the coding community, my friends, family and acquaintances. When an opportunity to share my story arises, don’t shy away from it and instead treat it like I would in a job interview, maybe not as formal but at least with the same passion and desire to share as I would when my job depends on it.