KIM HRIBAL
College Reflection
Throughout this semester, I have learned a lot of new things that have been instrumental to my professional development. First of all, I enrolled in a computer science course called Data Analysis and Mining, in which I had my first experience with R coding. I have never coded in R before, and the class was much more rigorous than any course I have taken before. There were a lot of new statistical concepts that were introduced to me as well. I learned a lot of strategies for classifying and organizing data that I have never learned before. Despite the challenges, I managed to excel in the course and was the head of leading our coding for my group course project. This experience really helped me to feel more confident in stepping out of my comfort zone and trying new things. This is very important as someone entering the coding career, where the technological landscape is constantly changing. I feel much more equipped to enter the professional world and adapt to changes and new learning experiences.
My Strengths and Weaknesses
Throughout my time in school, I have had many opportunities to explore my strengths and weaknesses. In my experiences and time in class I have been able to evaluate what I bring to the table and where I need more work to improve.
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To begin, I know I have strong skills in both adaptability and communication. Throughout my time in school I have had the privilege of exploring multiple different coding languages, and the Informatics major structure focuses on focusing on many different aspects of computer science, including Human Interaction Design, logic, and coding. Because there is such a wide range of concept in the major, every semester I was constantly being introduced to new concepts and practices. I had to adapt quickly and be ready to jump into a semester of brand new materials. I found that despite this, I have managed to excel and bounce from discipline to discipline with ease. I also have had the experience of working on many group projects in my classes (at least a few every semester) and with that experience was able to hone my communication skills. Through poor experiences with other group members, I began to value the importance of responding quickly, being polite as possible and focusing on rhetoric and tone (especially over email) and adjusting project requirements based on the needs of other group members. Overall, I truly believe my main strengths lie in my adaptability and communication skills.
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In regards to my weaknesses, I have found that public speaking and inability to say "No" are two of my greatest. First of all, my public speaking skills have always been a struggle for me. I suffer with anxiety, and when I stand in front of a room I often deal with fight or flight. Because I know that this is such a big weakness of mine, I took the initiative to take an elective course on public speaking and presentation skills for IT professionals. Over the course of this semester, my presentation skills and confidence in front of a room increased tremendously. For a different course, I had to present in front of a room of 200 people and 2 guest judges with my course project team. My team and I performed really well and managed to make it to the Finalists competition for our project pitch. I truly don't think that this would have been possible if I had not practiced my presenting skills and became more comfortable in front of a room. I also struggle with saying "no" oftentimes. When it comes to delegating team tasks, I have a bad habit of taking on too much work, and even received feedback throughout the semester that I do too large of an amount of my group's project work and should do a better job of delegating to other team members. This is something that I am hoping to work on in the future, because it is much more manageable and produces higher quality work to split work amongst a team.
Big Lessons
Lessons from this semester
Over the course of the semester, I learned the value of being on top of work and preparing ahead of time. Large and overwhelming assignments are so much easier to tackle when you split them up and do them in increments. I applied this to my life in several ways, by becoming better at managing my schedule and my time.
A piece of advice I would give myself for next semester is to take advantage of opportunities more, speak with people about career oriented goals, and to spend more time networking. I have only one semester left before I graduate and I feel like it would be beneficial to get more involved in forwarding my career.