professional_development.md

1. What is your greatest strength and how do you know?

• I believe that my greatest strength is my ability to connect with people. I believe that understanding and respecting others is an hugely important thing everyone should be doing but is not found very often. It allows me to be open and supportive to others, which can lead to better outcomes both personally and professionally. The Pairin qualities test said that I accept and respect others while supporting them to reach their full potential and it was the quality I had that mean the most to me.

2. How do you work best?

• I work best when I have a specific area of work to focus on. The Pairin results stated I was a specialist and that I like to plan and work with precision. I love being able to focus on one task and really dive into understanding or creating something. In addition, I enjoy having a separate space for work, but where I can also socialize or collaborate with others easily.

3. What is your greatest area of improvement?

• My greatest area of improvement is my flexibility. I sometimes find it difficult to change directions, especially if I have been told to do one thing and then that changes after I have started a task. I do know that this is an issue for me and I try to be cognizant and take steps to adapt. I would love to find more strategies to improve in this area.

4. How do you hope to maximize your strengths for your new career in software development?

• I want to find a role where I can be a leader supporting others. I would love to be a mentor for others or volunteer with an organization like Girls Who Code. I want to use my relationship skills to help others. I also think that my strengths would fit really well with project management roles, and that is something that I would like to explore in the future.

5. How might knowing about your strengths and working preferences benefit you as a software developer?

• It will help me find roles that fit my personality and that I'd be less likely to leave quickly. I know that I like to focus on one work area at a time, that I like building relationships and supporting others, and that professionalism and leadership is important to me. Knowing about these facts will also help me to assess opportunites to advance by looking at the tasks and responsibilities and comparing them to my strengths and weaknesses. It will also show me what areas I could improve on to be a successful software developer if I can learn what strengths successful ones have.

1. 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?

• I know how I learn best and try to rely on those learning methods as much as possible. I also try and check for understanding on a regular basis to make sure I am learning what I need to and internalizing those skills. I believe that these skills are successful for me. I think my main challenge in my learning process is frustration. In the past when I've become too frustrated I have a tendency to shut down and have trouble taking in new information. This is something I have been working on for a long time and continue to do so and I have definitely seen improvement, though I'm not done learning how to deal with it.

2. How do Sierra's and Coate's material relate to your current process for learning?

• I really like Coates' "Hopelessness feeds the fatigue that leads the student to quit." Hopelessness and fatigue are both things I have struggled with when learning difficult skills and I want to embrace Coates' perspective that learning something difficult is good for us and learn to embrace the suck. I really liked Sierra's approach to learning and approaching fluency by breaking down skills into smaller and easier to learn skills. I also really liked the idea of just exposing yourself to more complex ideas and learning through perception. I believe I am pretty good at breaking down skills into smaller and easier to manage chunks, but I do want to find ways to integrate more perception learning into my learning skills rota.

3. 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 unfortunately plays a large part in my ability to learn. I have become better at working through difficult subjects and emotions, but it is still difficult for me. When I have great successes it helps to fuel my learning and provides me with a big reinforcement for what I am learning. Failures tend to hit me harder and it's something that I have to work through and not take it too much to heart. I am very persistent and determined though, so I stick with something even if I'm having trouble with learning.

4. How will you prepare yourself to be at your best with your learning process while at Turing?

• Sierra mentioned cognitive leaks, so I'm going to do my best to get all extraneous stuff taken care of without having to think about it to have more cognitive power to apply to learning. I also am going to make sure I workout every day in the morning because I know I feel better and more focused when I'm exercising but I won't have the brain power to do it after a day of learning. I'm going to try and learn how to better accept and move through frustration and failure because I want to succeed at being a developer and I know those are big parts of the job. I am also going to continue with my therapy so that I have an opportunity to discuss and work through any issues I may be having with the pace of learning or my frustration which I know will help to keep me focused.