Build on your professional story by thinking about how you're progressing at Turing. Answer the questions below in your own gist to use your StrengthsFinder themes to add to your story:
Write 1-2 paragraphs about your StrengthsFinder themes: How have you seen yourself using these strengths at Turing? Has your understanding of these strengths changed since you first reflected on them? If so, how?
My strengths were harmony, restorative, empathy, deliberative and consistency. I found that these strenghts accurately reflected my view of myself. Harmony, restorative, empathy and even consistency all share the common theme of taking a cautious and thoughtful approach to dealing with people. I believe that this philosophy is something that I carry with me into all situations and regardless of who I'm dealing with. Strengthsfinder has allowed me to effectively confirm that these are my strengths. One of the challenges as I see it is to take these strenghts and apply them to their greatest potential in my work at Turing and beyond. I belive if I'm successful in doing so that I'll be a far more competent and effective programmer, both in the classroom and eventually out in the work force. My strengthsfinder primary theme was harmony - the quality of working to lesson conflict and build towards a common goal. This strength has always been aparent to me as I've developed as a student. I've yet to experience a situation at turing where that particular strength was really put to use. I do believe, however, that this strength has allowed me to approach every new situation cautiously and has guided me away from several instances in which conflict may have otherwise arisen. My second theme was restorative. This has been particularly apparent in my eagerness and excitement derived from solving a complicated problem and feeling proud of my own ability to come up with solutions. This experience has been very empowering and has enabled the sense that I'm capable of learning things quickly and effectively and then applying them in a complex fashion.
Write a story about your Turing experience so far: When have you struggled? How have you dealt with struggle? When have you succeeded at Turing? How did you accomplish those successes?
There have been a number of struggles at turing. One good example is my general reluctance to seek out help in any setting. I feel that the inclusivity and eagerness to help of the Mod 2 students was a major catalyst in my success thus far in Mod 1. I have felt far more comfortable and willing to reach out for help when I'm stuck and this has allowed me to progress far more quickly than I would have alone. One of my major successes has been the development of strong skills and understanding of CSS. This was achieved largely through persistence and also by keeping an open mind towards my ability to pick up these concepts and apply them to my work.
Answer the question: how does your Turing story end? Create a vision for your future and your career transition into being a junior developer.
At the end of Turing I will be a confident and passionate web developer prepared to continue working and developing my career. I will have a number of projects that I am proud of and which helped me become the developer that I am. These skills will help me to adapt quickly to a junior developer role where I will be well equipped to pick up concepts on the job and make meaningful contributions quickly. I will continue to be involved with the Turing community and will be able to effectively give back.
After you practice storytelling in the session, answer this question: What was particularly easy or difficult about telling your story? What are 1-2 steps that you can take to continue to improve your abilities to tell your story, talk about yourself with ease, and examine your strengths?
The parts of my personal story that are easy to talk about are most typically things related to why I've chosen to pursue coding as a career. The decision was a difficult one and had a lot of thought and consideration put into it. As a result, it's easy to work back through that reasoning when explaining it to somebody new and to feel confident in those motivations. More difficult parts of my personal story are things such as what type of developer I hope to be, or which areas I would like to focus on. This is largely due to my experience as a developer and the fact that I haven't yet broached many of the different topics which I may eventually embrace as what I would like to do primarily. A couple of steps I can take to improve the aforementioned weaknesses in my story are continued attempts to broaden my horizon as a coder and also seeking out guidance and insights from programmers in the industry to determine if their experience in their chosen roles resonates with my own strengths and priorities.