Capstone Professional Development
- What is your greatest strength and how do you know? My greatest strength is tenacity. I know this because I have consistently powered through difficult courses and projects throughout my academic career and personal life. Even when I felt like giving up, I have kept going and never got below a B- in college, while being awarded distinction on my thesis. I guess this is the tugboat characteristic.
- How do you work best? I work best on my own, when I am left completely to focus, but I have learned how to work collaboratively and have even started to like it. I prefer to work in environments like libraries and need to bring snacks. I also work well with Pomodoro-style timing for breaks. When I am working in a group, I work best with groups where work is distrubuted evenly and everyone has a say.
- What is your greatest area of improvement? My greatest area for improvement would be belief in myself. I need to work on self-confidence. I also need to work on asking for help. I am not terrible at it, but I could be better about it.
- How do you hope to maximize your strengths for your new career in software development? I hope to become more confident sharing my ideas. I also hope to keep up my tugboat tenacity, which keeps me moving and efficient. I hope to continue to keep my cool, which helps me with efficiency and collaboration. Lastly I hope, mostly, to continue my love for justice, and work to make things more fair and equal in the field.
- How might knowing about your strengths and working preferences benefit you as a software developer? It can help me identify both things that I can do well, which I can keep doing and things that I can improve on. Knowing I am a tugboat of justice can help me set goals and achieve them, both interpersonally and with work. Knowing what kinds of groups I work well with can help me with seeking out teams I know I will work well with. Lastly, knowing my work preferences for working on my own can help me with not just finding work I know I can do well, but with making my workspace more effective for me.
Step 5:
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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 make efforts to take breaks and process things. I also try to identify areas for improvement and work on those, while not letting other things fall by the wayside. It can be successful, but sometimes I do fall into bad habits and procrastinate. One of my biggest challenges is that I struggle to ask for help. I intend to work hard on that.
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How do Sierra's and Coate's material relate to your current process for learning? Coates' essay speaks to the invisibility of learning. It may not seem like you're learning, but one day it will hit you that you know things. I've experienced this with learning languages before, where I didn't realize I knew what I knew until I realized I was navigating Buenos Aires like I'd lived there my whole life and wasn't consciously thinking about it anymore.
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What role does your emotional state of mind play in your learning? How do your successes and failures at learning affect your emotional state? I have historically gotten stuck on assignments and had emotional difficulties with that, but in the end on those assignments, I asked for help and solved the problem. In the moment it seemed impossible and insurmountable and I was near giving up. (I didn't give up, though, and I am proud of myself for that.) I have gotten better about taking emotional steps back when I am overhwhelmed.
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How will you prepare yourself to be at your best with your learning process while at Turing? I will try to mentally prepare myself to ask for help, and work on managing time in healthier ways. I am also going to reinstitute some routines I used to maintain self-care when I was in college. That would be things like my "no homework Friday nights unless absolutely necessary" rule (so I have at least one night a week to relax), doing laundry Sunday mornings instead of whenever I remember to, and making sure I spend at least some time goofing off every day to keep myself sane.
Gear Up Prework Questions
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What role does empathy play in your life and how has it helped you? Empathy plays an important role in my life. It has helped me make some of my greatest friends and succeed in my jobs. In the first instance, allowing myself to see the world through others' eyes has helped me get to know people better and be supportive when they need it but won't say it, thus forming stronger relationships. At work, it helps me with interacting with customers, but also with interacting with my coworkers.
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How does empathy help you build better software? Empathy can help a software developer understand what a software really needs to be useful for its users. Using empathy can help identify areas where a software fails its users or could better serve their needs. The best example would be deigning software with people with disabilities in mind; one might not use a screen reader themselves, but designing with that use in mind makes the software better for users who need one.
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Why is empathy important for working on a team? Working on a team requires being able to understand other peoples' points of view. Being empathetic can help with easing possible tension in a team and with making sure voices are heard and viewpoints respected. It can help with identifying blindspots a group might have and figuring out how to address them. Most importantly, it is one of the best wasy to defuse conflict.
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Describe a situation in which your ability to empathize with a colleague or teammate was helpful. I work with high schoolers at both of my jobs, and when we work school nights I always remind myself that they, unlike me, generally have to be somewhere early in the morning. Because of this, I make sure that as shift leader we work efficiently when closing and I allow them to leave when I am locking up if they need to, because they do not need to be there for it and they should be resting up for school. I have spoken to some of them about this and know they appreciate that I try to get us out quickly.
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When do you find it most difficult to be empathetic in professional settings? How can you improve your skills when faced with these scenarios? I find it difficult to be empathetic when I am in a bad mood (for whatever reason) or am extremely preoccupied or struggling with something. In these situations, it can be hard to stop the tunnel vision, but in all honestly taking a break or going for a walk helps a bit. I can also just try to pay more attention to those around me when I am stressed or grumpy instead of focusing only inwards. The most important thing for me to do in these scenarios is take a moment when I realize what is going on and recenter myself.