My greatest strength is civic: I communicate effectively, work well in teams, and am aware of societal concerns. I know this because according to my Pairin results, my qualities are caregiver, people developer and lover of humanity. This is true in my professional life because although I can work independently, I prefer to work on a team. I like to analyze each individuals' strengths as well as my own and play to each accordingly.
I work best in an environment that provides some order and definition, but without heavy structure. In addition, I work best on a team environment that is supportive and encourages risk and growth. Such environment fosters collaboration which is important to me. I enjoy listening to others' opinions and ideas and believe it is important to have a well-rounded opinion by assessing all sides of an argument. For instance, I tend to have my own ideas and opinions but will listen to and incorporate others' ideas if I feel a good point is made or if I missed something entirely.
My greatest area of improvement is my overly idealistic mindset. I tend to see the forest instead of the individual trees. In order to improve upon this, I will balance ideating by taking actual steps to get to the bigger picture. For instance, I will have a long-term goal in mind but get caught up in romanticizing that dream. To improve on this, I know I should break up my long-term goals into short-term, more manageable goals. From there, I become proactive and get what I need to done.
I hope to maximize my strengths for my new career in software development by encouraging others to contribute his or her ideas. It is easy to get bogged down and be afraid to voice an opinion, especially in an area like tech which is predominantly white and male. My desire to support others by facilitating a safe environment to express ideas would hopefully encourage other women of color to express her thoughts.
Knowing about my strengths and working preferences will benefit me as a software developer by allowing me to play to my strengths which in turn allows me to identify my weaknesses. Such awareness will allow me to work as an effective and efficient developer. For instance, my greatest strength is I communicate effectively. Lack of communication can lead to a decrease in productivity. While working on a project, if I feel there is a lack of communication on the team, I will step up and address what needs to be communicated in order to effctively and efficiently complete a project. Time and resources can be saved by communicating well.
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?
To manage my learning process, I try to break down my tasks into small chunks. I like to use the cards on Github to track what I need to do and what needs to get done. In addition, I have started to organize my time better by utilizing my calendar and allocating a certain amount of time to specific tasks. These efforts have been mostly successful. By mostly I mean sometimes I get deep into a task and want to click every link in an article and end up spending way too much time on a task I said I was going to spend an hour on. At this point, I think there is a learning curve and a lot of information I have not seen before, but I will work better on my time management by not procrastinating and going too far down rabbit holes.
Sierra's material relates to my learning in that I will learn by doing and gain mastery through doing. In addition, I will not spend cognitive resources trying to overanalyze something when I could be using those resources more wisely completing and understanding a different task. Finally, Sierra's material relates to my process for learning in that I will split up seemingly large tasks into smaller ones that I can complete and master. I relate to Coate's article in that I am learning a concept that is fairly new and foreign to me. For Coate it was French, for me it is web development. Like Coate, I also feel that like I am getting better at stumbling. I understand that feeling hopeless is just that: a feeling. The only thing stopping me from my end goal of becoming a web developer is myself!
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 plays a crucial role in my learning. It is important to take care of one's self emotionally through self-care and having a growth mindset. Self care can be practiced by taking the time to do things you enjoy so that you do not burn out. In addition, I believe self care improves learning and makes it more enjoyable. Having a growth mindset is important and effects your learning when you are successful and when you are failing. While success can keep my firing burning, failure is inevitable and instead of getting bogged down it is important to pick one's self up and take the opportunity to learn and grow from such failures.
I will prepare myself to be at my best at Turing by managing my emotional health. Although I will dilligently take the time to complete and understand my assignments, I will also take the time for self care. By self care I mean I will spend an hour a day exercising and take a few hours on the weekend to revisit with friends and family. There is a delicate balance between hard work and play, and I plan to strike it!
