- Describe one of your strengths
- What is something you have learned to do well (list a skill)?
I have learned to communicate really well with others. Communicating about deadlines, empathy, feelings, needs and dreams. This is a skill that I developed while in sales.
- What is something you know about (list some knowledge/expertise you have)?
I have knowledge/expertise in programming, specially PHP, C#, and JavaScript. These are the languages that I have worked with the most and have resonated with me as ones that I want to continue working with.
- What is something you have a natural ability to do well (list a talent)?
A natural talent of mine is strong observational skills. I can watch from an outsiders perspective and have a good feeling and draw many conclusions from a situation and apply the strengths (and sometimes weaknesses) into my own life.
- How do those combine to create a specific strength?
These combine with a common theme, learning and growing through others and with others. I believe that learning a programing language is also working in a team, not by yourself. I thrive with getting feedback from others, as well as providing others feedback. One of my biggest dreams in live is becoming the best version of myself and that includes helping others around me becoming the best versions of themselves as well.
- Read through your Top 4 results from Pairin
- In your own words, what do these top 4 qualities tell you about yourself?
My Top 4 Pairin results tell me that I highly value relationships and working interdependantly with others. While it is not entirely necessary, I believe that it is the correct way to a successful journey in my life.
- Do they resonate with you? Why/why not?
They resonate with me because I believe the best way to become great at something is by teaching it. At times, this means that it can tougher for me to pick up on things because I don't see the value in it unless it is something that can benefit others as well as myself.
- How do they relate to the strength you wrote about in Prompt #1?
They relate very closely to the questions from Prompt #1. A large strength of mine, and one that continues to feed my motivation in life is through collaboration. A thought provoking, emotionally tugging conversation is what I live for! I feel like knowing yourself and knowing others around you can open up amazing opportunities that would be much more difficult to encounter than as an individual.
- Challenges with strengths
- What can make it challenging to recognize your strengths? How can you work through those challenges?
Sometimes it's hard to recognize a strength as a strength. You may know that you are good at something, but not that it necessary translates to the underlying strength that can be applied to multiple areas! I think this is a bit of self-reflection to realize how you categorize this strength and how to apply it to more than just that one thing that you are good at. One you can apply that to multiple uses in life, then it is a strength.
- Do you ever see yourself overusing certain strengths? In what circumstances would you want to use them less and amplify other strengths? How could you adjust your approach in those instances?
I think that it is easy to overuse anything that you are confident in and become too reliant on it. I was taught to use your strengths to reinforce your weaknesses so there were times where I ran into issues where my strengths were not applicable to that situation and felt really uncomfortable getting through it. I firmly believe now that there are ways to have the things your not good at become interdependent with your strengths to form a new spectrum where you have strengths to build up your weaknesses and turn them into things you are more proficient and confident with.
- Strengths in action
- Write 1-2 sentences describing how you like to work (i.e., Do you pre-plan? Do you talk through your ideas first? Do you work better with deadlines? How do you stay organized?)
I like to have a pre-plan session first and visualize how I will tackle it. Seeing a road in the middle of the journey can at least give me a vantage point. Once I start hit junctions in that journey, it's much easier for me to set a new baseline based on my original pre-plan sessions to keep moving forward.
- How could you talk about these working preferences with your project teammates? Your mentor? Your instructors?
Putting yourself in a position of power brings the team up as a whole and allows for the team to divide up a project based on the strongest being able to handle specific tasks. This makes the project better than it would have been in the end. A lot of times, asking someone else preferences and learning what works for them are great ways to make yourself better. It is also the practice of empathy, where you can your team mate learn better or for them to teach you better.
- What would you need to be aware of when working with people who have different strengths from you?
Learning how they work and how I can best support them. It is a goal to make every project and process as less stressful as possible to put out a better product and build better relationships.
- How could your Pairin results help you better understand your everyday working preferences?
I'm not entirely sure on this. I feel like it is too easy to manipulate tests like this based on how I'm feeling at that moment rather than getting into the real sub-conscious thoughts and actions I would take in a jam. This is something that I need to take more time to reflect on.
- Continued growth
- Is there any particular strength you'd like to sharpen while you're at Turing? Any area you consider a weakness that you'd like to strengthen?
One weakness for me to work on is staying busy with working while the content is not at my level. Having been a programmer before, it makes me want to put off the projects until the last minute because I know they are not hard for me now, however in the long term this will create bad habits for projects that I do the extra time with.
- What are some steps you could take here?
Help other people to make sure that I understand completely and reinforce my knowledge and foundation. There were many things this first project that I solved easily on my own, however stepping back and helping others made me things of new ways and processes to approach my own and made my code even stronger.
Also, not being afraid to look ahead at other content and working on it around my current class requirements.
- How could you be aware of progress you're making?
Just keep programming and making journals. I love looking back at where I was when I first started something. For me, it's all about progress, not perfect. As long as I see myself making progress then I will stay motivated and engaged.