demaceo/Career Development

## Career Development
Step 3 Responses:

What is your greatest strength & how do you know?
	I’d like to preface this off by stating that I had initially answered the above question with a 3 paragraph response. Though, I understand that that might have been a bit overwhelming. In summary, it was a lengthy description detailing my appreciation for dialectics & objective truths. If I were to rephrase that into what my greatest strength is I would say that I can convey & receive information well. I’ve taught a variety of subjects in natural sciences to students of all ages throughout the country for many years now. From this experience I’ve come to realize that simply exchanging knowledge, efficiently & effectively, is an art form in of itself.

How do you work best?
	I’ve come to learn that my ideal working & learning environment is, at first, in a space of my own without any distractions. I could say that I prefer not being on a time crunch, however, I know that under those circumstances I can more easily get stuck overanalyzing whatever it is that I’m working on. So, I suppose I work more efficiently under some slight form of pressure, though I don’t particularly enjoy presenting work that I felt rushed in producing. I find that when I have an organized set of tasks before me I can, with sufficient time, attend to each one diligently.

What is your greatest area of improvement?
	For the longest time I’ve based my productivity on motivation. If I was motivated, I was productive. On the flip-side, whenever I lacked a desire to do something it just wouldn’t get done. It seemed that I had gauged my productivity on how willing I was to do it. Realizing that this has been & would continue to be a crutch in my overall work ethic, I began exercising self-discipline. Being that on days when I lacked motivation I’d still be able to accomplish the goals I had set out for myself.

How do you hope to maximize your strengths for your new career in software development?
	Being that I view successful communication as an art form, I am ecstatic to apply this mindset to software development. First, I’d like to hone in on my researching skills. I’m already naturally curious in obtaining an understanding of how things work. I hope with continued practice & exposure I’ll gradually improve upon my understanding to the point where I can develop software that translates seamlessly to the general user.

**How might knowing about your strengths & working preferences benefit you as a software developer?
	Since this is an entirely new field of study for me I believe that being cognizant of my strengths & working preferences will at the very least provide a familiar foundation to base myself on. I’ve also conducted research in marine biology & then had to educate others on a topic that they can’t readily engage in with their own senses. So translating what I know into something that they can ascertain is a skillful process. This coupled with a curiosity for learning about & from others has the potential to be a recipe for developing software that is not only something that people are interested in but can also understand.


Step 5 Responses:

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 am working on managing tasks one at a time instead of juggling multiple different projects at once or succumbing to everyday distractions. This is a relatively recent endeavor & it’s already proving to be a case of “old habits die hard” but I am seeing a lot of progress (e.g. turning my phone off, sticking to a solid study routine, having everything I may need readily available nearby). Challenges that have inhibited my ability to manage my learning process would definitely be time management through self-discipline.

How do Sierra's and Coate's material relate to your current process for learning?
	A few quotable moments from Coate’s article that resonated with me are: “Hopelessness feeds the fatigue that leads the student to quit. It is not the study of language that is hard, so much as the ‘feeling’ that your present level is who you are & who you will always be.” & “.. one must savor those moments of feeling high, because they are not the norm. The lows are the norm. The struggle is the norm. May it ever be thus.”.
	These quotes stood out to me because in the past if I was trying something new & didn’t immediately succeed at it I would sit back & shrug my shoulders convinced that I just wasn’t naturally good at it. Nowadays, that same attitude admittedly still lingers though I now know that if I’m not “naturally good” at something I’ll just have to practice if I want to get better at it. Seems obvious though confidence is also crucial in this.
	My biggest takeaway from Sierra’s keynote is that “expertise requires cognitive resource management” & in order to sort signal from noise when learning there needs to be exposure to high-quality, very high-quantity examples. I also strongly agree with the concept of “a half-a-skill beats a half-assed-skill” by splitting big tasks into smaller ones & mastering those one chunk at a time.

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 of mind plays a significant role in my learning process. I manage it through routine: waking up from a good night’s rest, eating a healthy meal, doing some sort of physical activity, & then beginning my day. So far that seems to be the trick in preventing grogginess, fatigue, & irritability. When I succeed in learning something new I feel euphoric. When I fail, I cycle through a myriad of emotions but also end up learning from my mistakes.

How will you prepare yourself to be at your best with your learning process while at Turing?
	My main goal in preparing for Turing is to create an effective work routine & stubbornly sticking to it. I really want to make sure that I’m asking for help too whenever I’m stuck or don’t know how to do something (even if I think it’ll make me look foolish). I also understand to not only utilize the instructors but also the vast amount of online resources. Though, because there are so many readily available, if/when I get overwhelmed I can circle back to Sierra & Coate’s principles & practices of learning or simply message in the Slack channel. From now having worked through module 0 , I know that I need to work much more on actually applying the concepts I’ve learned in a variety of different ways (e.g. practice, practice, practice).
	Step 3 Responses:

	What is your greatest strength & how do you know?
	I’d like to preface this off by stating that I had initially answered the above question with a 3 paragraph response. Though, I understand that that might have been a bit overwhelming. In summary, it was a lengthy description detailing my appreciation for dialectics & objective truths. If I were to rephrase that into what my greatest strength is I would say that I can convey & receive information well. I’ve taught a variety of subjects in natural sciences to students of all ages throughout the country for many years now. From this experience I’ve come to realize that simply exchanging knowledge, efficiently & effectively, is an art form in of itself.

	How do you work best?
	I’ve come to learn that my ideal working & learning environment is, at first, in a space of my own without any distractions. I could say that I prefer not being on a time crunch, however, I know that under those circumstances I can more easily get stuck overanalyzing whatever it is that I’m working on. So, I suppose I work more efficiently under some slight form of pressure, though I don’t particularly enjoy presenting work that I felt rushed in producing. I find that when I have an organized set of tasks before me I can, with sufficient time, attend to each one diligently.

	What is your greatest area of improvement?
	For the longest time I’ve based my productivity on motivation. If I was motivated, I was productive. On the flip-side, whenever I lacked a desire to do something it just wouldn’t get done. It seemed that I had gauged my productivity on how willing I was to do it. Realizing that this has been & would continue to be a crutch in my overall work ethic, I began exercising self-discipline. Being that on days when I lacked motivation I’d still be able to accomplish the goals I had set out for myself.

	How do you hope to maximize your strengths for your new career in software development?
	Being that I view successful communication as an art form, I am ecstatic to apply this mindset to software development. First, I’d like to hone in on my researching skills. I’m already naturally curious in obtaining an understanding of how things work. I hope with continued practice & exposure I’ll gradually improve upon my understanding to the point where I can develop software that translates seamlessly to the general user.

	**How might knowing about your strengths & working preferences benefit you as a software developer?
	Since this is an entirely new field of study for me I believe that being cognizant of my strengths & working preferences will at the very least provide a familiar foundation to base myself on. I’ve also conducted research in marine biology & then had to educate others on a topic that they can’t readily engage in with their own senses. So translating what I know into something that they can ascertain is a skillful process. This coupled with a curiosity for learning about & from others has the potential to be a recipe for developing software that is not only something that people are interested in but can also understand.


	Step 5 Responses:

	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 am working on managing tasks one at a time instead of juggling multiple different projects at once or succumbing to everyday distractions. This is a relatively recent endeavor & it’s already proving to be a case of “old habits die hard” but I am seeing a lot of progress (e.g. turning my phone off, sticking to a solid study routine, having everything I may need readily available nearby). Challenges that have inhibited my ability to manage my learning process would definitely be time management through self-discipline.

	How do Sierra's and Coate's material relate to your current process for learning?
	A few quotable moments from Coate’s article that resonated with me are: “Hopelessness feeds the fatigue that leads the student to quit. It is not the study of language that is hard, so much as the ‘feeling’ that your present level is who you are & who you will always be.” & “.. one must savor those moments of feeling high, because they are not the norm. The lows are the norm. The struggle is the norm. May it ever be thus.”.
	These quotes stood out to me because in the past if I was trying something new & didn’t immediately succeed at it I would sit back & shrug my shoulders convinced that I just wasn’t naturally good at it. Nowadays, that same attitude admittedly still lingers though I now know that if I’m not “naturally good” at something I’ll just have to practice if I want to get better at it. Seems obvious though confidence is also crucial in this.
	My biggest takeaway from Sierra’s keynote is that “expertise requires cognitive resource management” & in order to sort signal from noise when learning there needs to be exposure to high-quality, very high-quantity examples. I also strongly agree with the concept of “a half-a-skill beats a half-assed-skill” by splitting big tasks into smaller ones & mastering those one chunk at a time.

	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 of mind plays a significant role in my learning process. I manage it through routine: waking up from a good night’s rest, eating a healthy meal, doing some sort of physical activity, & then beginning my day. So far that seems to be the trick in preventing grogginess, fatigue, & irritability. When I succeed in learning something new I feel euphoric. When I fail, I cycle through a myriad of emotions but also end up learning from my mistakes.

	How will you prepare yourself to be at your best with your learning process while at Turing?
	My main goal in preparing for Turing is to create an effective work routine & stubbornly sticking to it. I really want to make sure that I’m asking for help too whenever I’m stuck or don’t know how to do something (even if I think it’ll make me look foolish). I also understand to not only utilize the instructors but also the vast amount of online resources. Though, because there are so many readily available, if/when I get overwhelmed I can circle back to Sierra & Coate’s principles & practices of learning or simply message in the Slack channel. From now having worked through module 0 , I know that I need to work much more on actually applying the concepts I’ve learned in a variety of different ways (e.g. practice, practice, practice).