Personal Dev Storytelling

storytelling

Strengths & Storytelling Reflection Guidelines

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?

Strengths- empathy, relator, developer, strategic, adaptability

I use empathy/relator/developer to build intentional relationships with people, and though they often build roadblocks for my social 
development, I use these same strengths to overcome them. I also use these strengths to commiserate with people about their
struggles and to lend an ear when needed. I'm a good listener! I have greatly employed strategery to help me manage my time and
plan how to tackle projects and assignments and stay organized. I have used adaptability to reach out when I need help and to 
handle the sudden changes in schedule. Adaptability is also useful when pairing; it often gives me more flexibility to conform or 
compromise with someone else's working styles.

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 greatest struggles and successes have not been about coding or learning the material. They are more cenetered around how I 
handle my anxiety and social tendencies. I counted it as a great success the first week when I pushed myself to build 
relationships in an atmosphere where my first inclination is to keep to myself. I've struggled a lot with how to balance the 
expectation of interacting constantly with my need for a lot of time to myself, and I count it as a success that I have 
found ways to acheive this. It is also a great success that I have built strong lines of communication with the administration
that I take advantage of when I feel like I need direction or when I think something about the community needs changing. 

Answer the question: how does your Turing story end? Create a vision for your future and your career transition into being a junior developer.

My Turing story ends with me finding a job with a company that values my identity and my differences and leverages those to 
affect change socially, even on a small level. I would like to stay in Denver. I don't want my journey of learning to end with
Turing. I would love to find a position with a company that encourages personal growth, extracurricular learning, and pursuing
personal goals. 

A more long-term goal would be to find a position in a company that does work that I am personally passionate about and invested
in, such as a company that is directly involved with LGBT rights, genderqueer people, makeup, or food/restaurants. 


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?

I find it fairly easy to talk about myself, especially if the person I'm talking to seems genuinely interested. The more 
difficult aspect was trying to spin the answers to the above questions into a story having a beginning, middle, end, an organic
flow, and a purpose. I'm hoping to simplify and rework my answers into a story that can be used in my professional profiles.