Dandelion Days
June 20, 2016
The past six weeks have flown by. I feel in my body the exhaustion that comes after having gone to sleep 40+ times after full-power days of intense learning and growth. This week of reprieve has given me a chance to reflect on my goals, notice my strengths and opportunities, and create new expectations for myself going into the second module.
My goals in starting Turing were to push myself as hard as I could so that when I leave, I enter the workforce as an capable computer programmer. To me, that meant putting in 12+ hour days (which have easily turned into 14 hour days), finding mentors and asking for help, keeping up with the assignments, embracing my new community socially and culturally, and preparing the rest of my life to lay fallow while I focus my energy on this new endeavor.
How easily my list of criticisms begins, and how difficult it is to list my strengths! I notice this difference, and smile. I have been playing with mindfulness as a way of accepting the humiliation I feel when comparing my mental dexterity to others', an exercise geared at moving me further along to confidence. I started this program for such different reasons than I've used in the past for life changes--not out of an ethical compulsion, but out of a need for recognition. In the past, I have felt impassioned by a sense of solidarity with people and animal liberation movements and thoroughly humbled by how little I knew and how little I had suffered. Trying to reframe this sense of low self-worth into one of empowered confidence is proving more challenging than I realized. That identity dug itself in deeper than I knew, and so my challenge is two-fold: 1) convince myself that I have something to offer, and 2) learn something worth offering.
Self-awareness:
I want to add value to the organizations I'm apart of, and I want to be seen for these contributions. I want to be stimulated with my work, and I want to have stability in my workplace. Having this awareness of what I'm looking for in my career is something that has been fueling my passion so far.
Communication:
I will also note that I've tried hard to communicate effectively with my project partners and it has benefitted our working relationships. I've asked to check in when something seems wrong and have tried to be explicit about our expectations for progress throughout the project.
Self-Confidence:
Regarding my opportunities for improvement, as I've alluded to above, I want to work on gaining confidence in my abilities. My strategy for this is to accept that I don't know everything, that I will never know everything, and that given those two things, I still have good ideas worth contributing.
Self-Worth:
I also want to try to separate my self-worth from my worldly successes, given that on a spiritual level, I don't believe that who I am is what I do for work or knowledge. As least, I think I believe that. The struggle against this indoctrination is real.
My expectations for the next six weeks involve balancing work time at school with supporting my sweetheart who will be starting at Turing next week. He has been supporting me during my first module and I want to be able to support him more as he gets used to the rigor of the program. This will mean I need to use my time in the mornings more efficiently, and I will need to work smarter at school as well.
I will join Kerry's deliberate action group to hold myself accountable to my 'working smarter' goal.
I also want to get my feet wetter with our Pahlka posse's project. I hope to play a bigger role going forward.
Additionally, I hope to accurately represent my cohort's thoughts at our SAB meetings. I want to stay organized so my co-representative and I can collect and analyze survey results before our meetings, and reflect back the meeting outcomes in an expedient way. Lastly, I hope to find a mentor in civic tech who has been in the workplace for a little while and can help me when my resources are limited at school. Phew!
That's all I have for now. Till next time!