My greatest strength is my adaptability. I've learned this from experience - I've exposed myself to a wide variety of experiences and have learned how to excel in each. From working as a security officer, sound designer, or even a high school music instructor, I've become adept at learning new things quickly and maximizing what I have to offer. Recognizing this strength has helped give me the confidence going forward to pursue what I want - personally and professionally.
I work best under a little bit of pressure. I've learned my attention can be more prone to wandering when I get too relaxed. The pressure helps keep things a bit more exciting, too. The more out of my comfort zone I am, the more I feel like I learn, and the more rewarding the work is.
I'm uncomfortable with conflict. It leads to some pretty unproductive scenarios, especially when it comes to working in a team. I know the push and pull that comes with working with others is necessary, but I often struggle with separating the professional part from the personal part. As a result, I avoid speaking my mind for the sake of keeping the peace or not disrupting the flow of things - I don't want to be that guy. I just need more practice in situations that push me out of that comfort zone, so I know how to handle conflict better.
I want to maintain my confidence in my ability to learn going forward, as it seems that's one of the biggest parts of being a software developer. You have to know when to admit you don't know something, and how to move forward from that. That's one thing I'm very good at, so I definitely want to keep that going. I also want to keep pushing myself out of my comfort zone - that'll be how I know I'm growing and learning, especially in regards to what I consider my greatest weaknesses.
I think being aware of my strengths and working preferences will help me capitalize on them better. Building that mindfulness of not only the quality of my work but the qualities of my working style will be a great habit going forward to keep myself from becoming stagnant. I want to always be learning and growing, and personal growth starts with personal awareness. I think that will be key in being successful in my career.
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?
When I'm learning a completely new concept, I make an effort to break things into manageable pieces. At this point, it's a necessary part of the process for me, and definitely has been successful. Not doing so quickly leads to feelings of being overwhelmed, and hinders my learning process. When I'm practicing a more familiar skillset, it's more about iteration and picking one thing to focus on to make better. It's in a similar vein as breaking a new skillset down into manageable chunks, but with added context. Again, at this point I consider it an essential part of the process. The challenge that inhibits these efforts the most is honestly my pride - the desire to learn something quickly can sometimes get in the way of my need to slow down in order to fully master what I'm learning.
Sierra really hit home with her discussion of perceptual learning. It's something I've been doing for the longest time without realizing it, especially when I was a musician. I used to watch the really good musicians all the time and simply play along with them, and it worked. Now I'm really excited to implement the same thing with my coding. With Coate's discussion of the emotional aspect of learning - I've now realized how unaware of that I was. To me, the emotional aspect was so fundamentally tied to the whole process, to the point of it almost being an unconscious thing. I'm going to make greater efforts going forward to be mindful of how I'm feeling while I learn, recognizing the bad feelings and celebrating the good ones.
What role does your emotional state of mind play in your learning? How do your successes and failures at learning affect your emotional state?
In the same vein as my answer to the last question - this is actually kind of a new arena for me. I've started working on how mindful I am, but the second I get caught up in trying to achieve something, that awareness takes a back seat. With where I'm at now, I feel like my emotional state has too much agency in how well I learn. I feel like I rely too much on the good feelings to keep me going, and let the bad feelings dictate when I think I should stop. I'm going to make greater efforts to start cultivating an awareness of my emotional state while I learn to work on this.
I'm going to start by building a better habit of mindfulness. As discussed in my previous answers, I need to build a better habit of emotional awareness and how it plays into my learning process. Building this habit will be my primary goal going forward before class starts, and this habit will be my foundation for the decisions and other habits I build throughout Turing and beyond in my career. To make it actionable I'll give myself a reflection period, before and after I work, in which I'll reflect on my emotional state and how it affects my work.