Write: Reflect on your experience at Turing thus far and write out your story, answering the questions who are you, why are you here, what's next? Think about how others might root for you as a character and what's at stake for you in your career transition. Consider:
Your Strengths: what makes you the "hero" of this story? If you took StrengthsFinder, reflect on how developing your strengths at Turing has influenced your story How have you grown at Turing? What obstacles have you overcome? What turning points led you to make this career change? What does your third act look like? How does transitioning to this career bring some closure to this narrative arc? Describe causality -- what made you want to make this career change? How is it grounded in your character? How you can create trust with the listener Creating coherence in your story Utilize a story form Tell multiple stories -- how can you adapt your story to different situations? Practice telling your story.
Perhaps this is unique to me, but I have always segmented my life into phases. Childhood, university years, working life in the US, working life outside the US. Exploring different countries and traveling the world in turn got sliced up into phases as well. Even now, here at Turing, I see it as a phase in my mind. It is finite, ater all. It will come to an end, eventually. But not in terms of what I'm learning. I see that in an entirely different light. What we are learning here at Turing in software development has for the first time in my life, felt like laying a foundation to build upon with something greater.
I have always been a learner by nature. I like to understand the mechanics of why things happen, and how they work or function, over memorising historical timelines or recitations of facts. For most of my life, I have felt that my learning process was controlled by the overall progression of the direction my life should take. Go to primary and secondary school in order to be admitted to university and then continue in the same vein to enter the workforce. But I realized after entering the workforce, armed with a university degree, that everything I learned in university was essentially irrelevant to what I would need to know in the workforce, and on top of that, it did not seem as if I would be continuing the learning process and building up my knowledge base while working. Things seemed stagnant. I ran with it for awhile, used traveling and exploring new places as my outlet for satisfying my thirst for learning and understanding - new countries in all their foreignness and ambiguity have a way of giving me back my curiosity again. But that eventually grew dull as well. It was not until I started voicing these concerns to some of my friends that I realized it was time to address this stagnation and look for something that would inspire me again. Getting into software development, in which you have the opportunity to problem-solve, and build something (although not quite tangible, still very rewarding), was a great decision for me. I have never been so excited to be in school than at Turing, and the community that surrounds each person at Turing is absolutely phenomenal.