LEARNING REFLECTION

What is your long term goal and or career pathway?

I’ve always had hopes of being becoming a full fledged programmer. It would be awesome to work for the big companies like Google, Facebook and YouTube; to name a few. But ultimately, I think I speak for everyone when I say that owning a business that you built from the ground-up is the end goal. Specifically, I’d like to start a business with my girlfriend who’s a business and marketing expert.

What skills (non-technical - human skills) would you like to see developed in yourself while at EDA?

To tell you the truth, I have a baby-face and I’ve realised that some from the older generation struggle to get along with me. With that said, I’d like to broaden my conversational skills to capture even the most old-fashioned person in the room.

A description of your own strengths and limitations

Cultural Strengths

I’m an approachable person who’s always ready to lend a hand. Inversely, I do feel open enough to ask for help if needed and don’t feel the need to hold back. It’s just like the golden rule: “Do as you would be done by”.

Cultural Limitations

Being an extrovert has its cultural limitations. It can be seen in a negative view from the outside even when not meaning to.

Based on the above description, a commitment to how you will manage your workload in this programme. This should include - an explanation of how you will manage yourself to work productively and safely with other learners, facilitators and industry/community representatives.

It’s a good practice to always skim through the whole course/module/sprint’s content to get a rough estimate of the length of the project and how you can divide those into blocks that would fit your entire program/sprint/day to manage workload by spreading it even.

Knowing how to behave and place yourself when working individually, in pairs, in groups is key to working productively. You don’t need to isolate yourself when working alone but read the room before starting conversations. When working in pairs, you can work in your own bubble and conversations can be held at a moderate level is another example of working productively as a cohort.

A commitment as to how and where you will seek help in a timely way.

Understanding the problem at hand is the first key event when shown a problem.

From there, it’s all about knowing your options to get the answers and the order of how to approach it:

• Use the internet if I can’t get the answer yourself. Specifically in programming, there’s a high chance someone else has come across the same problem and has found answers.
• Won’t spend too much time on the internet if no answer has been found. Time to approach teachers and students in your academic community.

A description of what you expect from the facilitation team

My expectation from the facilitation team is to guide us less and less as we progress through the course to lose the sense of dependency on our part as aspiring, problem-solving developers.

Any scheduling information such as block-out times when you are committed to other things. For example, you might have whanau commitments such as school drop-offs. It’s important to plan these in.

• I have my regular exercise breaks in the afternoon already in place to keep me sane and mobile.
• After dinner is traditionally family time and ideally go back to work when everyone else goes to bed.