Many years ago I found some money on the street, for content about $500 in a stack. There was no way to identify whose the money it was. I basically had the decision to either keep the money or hand it in to the police. The dilemma I basically had was this is a lot of money and it is not mine. If I had lost that much I would be devastated, so I ended up returning it. If I am being completely honest, there was a lot of temptation for me to keep it, like I said it is a lot of money. And being more honest if there was less money there I would have been even more tempted to keep it. I do feel good about the decision I made, I know it was the right decision, I am more proud of myself that I made that choice and not keep the money.
I grew up in a fairly traditional Indian family, while living in NZ. Growing up I was saw a lot of different cultures because a lot of my friends were not caucasian either, so I was exposed to different viewpoints. From my research on myself and finding my values, one that stood out very clearly, was the idea of having good people around you and that your family are the people you are closest with. I think this part of myself comes from my Indian heritage where its very common to call anyone you meet a brother or sister, or an aunt or uncle. As I have grown up I have kept this value closely and am so fortunate now to have so many people in my life I love.
I think a strength of mine is I am good at having perspective on an issue. I feel other people can sometimes tunnel vision on an issue and spiral into stress, when unnessesary. I think I am good at looking at an issue in a wider contexts and not get bogged down my little details. I think this will help me in my learning journey, because I think coding has so many rabbit holes you can fall down and get trapped. I think that my stregth will help me move through the content at a reasonable pace, while learning what I need to.
I think sometimes maintaining focus and movitation is a limitation of mine. I think that this could risk me falling behind, and not be at the level I need to be either at the end of this course, or once I am out in the workforce. I feel I am working well to overcome this by putting myself in an environment where I can stay focused, taking breaks to keep my mind focused for longer. It has been difficult to begin with but it is slowly improving.
Another limitation for me is sometimes at stressful times, I tend to become quiet and not communicate with others when need be. I think when I am stressed I internalise it alot. What I am going to be aiming to do going forward, is when I start to feel pressured, find someone to talk to ie. a friend, study buddy, or facilitator. I want to start early as to avoid a lot of stress being piled up.
When I was in university, I had a study group with people that used to stress out alot. One particular time, the day before an exam we were studying and one person in particular was stressing out and had started to cry and shout. I think as a group many people fell into the pit of stress and also started to lose focus on what was happening. I suggested everyone leave the room for a little while, to cool off, and refocus. After about 15 minutes we came back together to keep studying. We talked for abit about how we were feeling now, and it seemed in general everyone had taken a step back and now had refocused. It was pretty shocking how effective that was. It felt like everyone had worked eachother up and some space by ourselves destressed everyone. I think the strategy worked reasonably effectively. In hindsight, I would probably to the same, but probably try getting space at good intervals rather than waiting for the tension to build to a breaking point.