Professional Developement Pre-work

1. What is your greatest strength and how do you know?
   • My greatest strength is collaboration with others, especially in a creative environment. I know this because it's something I've done my whole life in many different ways. I've been a drummer most of my life and playing music is highly collaborative, and I depend on my band to come prepared and contribute to the project while they depend on me to do the same. In college I often had semester long group projects that required good communication and time management, and the quality of the project depends on an equal contribution from everybody in the group. Finally, while my friends and I experimented electronic music production we would put in hours of work on our own to try and be able to understand the digital audio workstation and all of its components. We would compete with each other in a friendly manner, while also writing songs together and helping each other become better producers. Collaborating with others is how I learn and work best.
2. How do you work best?
   • I work best with clear project goals, an established schedule, and effective communication. Without a clear definition of the project goals or timeline it can become hard to continue in a certain direction confidently. However, with good communication the project goal and important deadlines are never ambiguous.
3. What is your greatest area of improvement?
   • My greatest area of improvement is time management. Although I've historically turned in quality work on time, I struggle to budget the work over a period of time, and will usually work long hours to meet deadlines that I've set for myself.
4. How do you hope to maximize your strengths for your new career in software development?
   • I hope to become a good programmer by establishing good habits early, especially in my weaker areas like time management, so that my strengths can be closer to 100% and unimpeded by weaknesses.
5. How might knowing about your strengths and working preferences benefit you as a software developer?
   • By knowing my strengths I can proactively seek a professional environment more accomidating to them, and avoid those that would hinder them in order to ensure I produce my best work.