I believe my greatest strength is my ability to keep an optimistic outlook and persevere through challenges. I know this because it has been tested throughout my personal, professional and educational life. I have had many setbacks that have slowed me down or changed my course but I always remain positive about the end goal and work towards it. I also believe that in team environments my ability to look on the bright side and keep things fun has helped others to persevere.
I work best on challenges that have parameters but also allow the ability to improvise. I especially enjoy working with teams on larger projects in which we do our own individual tasks but collaborate on the project. I work best on projects that have timeframes and deadlines but are free from micro-management of each step of the process.
I think my greatest area of improvement is to ask for help sooner rather than later. My personality is to attack a problem from every angle to try to figure it out. If help comes my way I am always open to it however I sometimes struggle to ask for help soon enough. This is something I have been working on and know that it will be very important while at Turing as time is a scarce resource.
I believe I have a good foundation of soft skills and people skills that I have developed from previous experience. I hope my teamwork, leadership, willingness to help and reliability will transfer well into software development. Although I believe I have a good foundation, I hope to continue to improve in these areas as well as other soft skills. My hope when it comes time to interview that I have a strong technical knowledge as well and I will be viewed as a well-rounded candidate.
It is always important to know your strengths and weaknesses. Having self-awareness is important to know what you bring to a team as well as what you can improve on. I also believe it is important to be well-rounded and to not rely too heavily on any one strength. If you are very strong in perseverance but weak in the ability to receive feedback or change course you could waste a lot of time and energy. Without knowing your working preferences you could be setting yourself up for failure. For example, someone who needs guidance and direction might not do well in a remote working situation.
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 try to have a systematic approach to the learning process with opportunities for feedback. The exact details vary with the subject matter but I typically try to see a broad picture of the topic as a whole and then break things down into smaller segments. I often start by creating a liist of everything I want to learn and map these areas out. I do believe I’ve had a lot of success in my learning process but it is constantly changing. I think the biggest challenge I’ve had are when I get too focused on the minute tasks and don’t stop to see where I am at with the learning process as a whole. Often it might seem like I am managing the process and making progress but there’s a difference between being productive and progressing in the actual learning.
One of the biggest takeaways I had from both of their material is that progress is not always linear. This is something I’ve experienced in most of the harder things I’ve tried to learn, including languages and technical material. Often, there is an “Ah ha” moment where something clicks. The brain works in funny ways sometimes and there is no rhyme or reason as to when something truly clicks for it. Sierra’s speech also showed how important it is to learn things the correct way and how inefficiencies in the learning process can cause a lot of damage.
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 is very important in my learning as it has a big effect on my outlook. It is always easier to stay motivated when learning something comes easy and you can see clear progress. It is much harder to do the necessary work if it feels like you are not making any progress. For me, it is important to keep things in perspective. As I write this, I know that Turing will be challenging and I will have many moments of frustration. I want to do my best to plan for these moments to occur so they do not surprise me. My goal is to focus on the process and work hard every day to become a better programmer.
One of my main goals for Turing is to increase my ability to learn. I know this will be super important for a career in software development. I think by knowing myself and what has worked/not worked in the past will be important but so will the ability to adapt and to try new methods. I want to have a plan going in of how I will study but also be open to coaching. Flashcards and repetition have always helped me in the past and I plan to try these with certain aspects. I also plan to talk to others who have recently gone through the same program to learn where the pitfalls in their learning have occurred. I think that knowing ahead of time where most people struggle will help with my emotional state during those times.
