Ownership
I’m great at taking ownership for my actions when I do well and good about being pretty honest with myself and others when I’m not doing well on a task. During my Interactive class this quarter, I came in pretty confident knowing that I had taken a couple programming classes before. Ironically, it became the course that I’ve occasionally fallen behind on and have had the most trouble with mastering concepts. I worked with Maria and Pao for our first project, which was a redesign of the Yale School of Art website. Honestly, I had fallen behind in learning about Javascript plugins for the class and ended up focusing on the visual design and project management for my team. I think taking ownership about strengths and weaknesses in my performance allows me to work better on teams and complete tasks more efficiently.
Learn and Be Curious
I don’t feel any hesitation about diving into subject matter I’m not completely familiar with. During a previous work experience as an administrative assistant for a psychologist, I had to pick up new skills quickly in order to fill in knowledge gaps at my office. Without having any previous knowledge or experience in accounting, I learned Quickbooks software and became the main bookkeeper for my employer, a task that I came to look forward to at work. This taught me to be pretty open to learn things that I didn’t necessarily think were in my skill set when needed.
Deep Dive
I love diving into interests and reading about topics that interest me. While I was an art student during a previous degree, I realized that I was also interested in graphic design. I started following lots of graphic designers on social media platforms, read graphic design classics such as Grid Systems and Elements of Typographic Style, and collected designs I was interested in on a Pinterest account. I feel like continuing these small routine habits over long periods of time has allowed me to develop an eye for design, and I’m happy to finally get some formal training in the field!
Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer
I don’t believe that any large corporation is ‘earth’s best employer,’ but I do think that large corporations have an important part to play in the future of our planet. For that reason, I would like to hear more from workers at Amazon about what people could do at the individual level to make things better within their company.