Foundations Sprint One - Identity, values & strengths documentation
My core personal values:
Evidence of core values:
Self awareness:
Self awareness is a deep rooted value that I have practiced over the past few years while growing into an adult. I use self awareness to keep me grounded, respect other people and “be interested, not interesting” - in other words, “the world doesn't revolve around you”. I started practicing self awareness and self reflection when I started University in 2018. As part of my degree, we were required to keep a blog and continuously document our work and reflect on our progress. From this, I began getting in the habit or self reflecting through journaling. I found this a great habit to get into as I began to become more self aware of my actions throughout the day, rather than reflecting on all of my actions at the end of the day.
Dr Jordan B. Petersons 6th rule in his book, 12 Rules For Life: an Antidote to Chaos, includes; “set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world”. To me this means no one is perfect and neither are you - I think it is important to remind yourself of this everyday.
Evidential feedback from my mother, Carol:
Erin was an amazing kid – pretty smart and good at sports. She got glandular fever at about 12 yrs old and since then I notice that when she is tired/busy/stressed she doesn’t always take good care of herself physically and mentally. My observation is that she is at her best when she does good/extensive physical exercise and then she sleeps better and is better prepared for life and it maintains a positive mood. I think she recognises this sometimes.
Feedback from my friend and past project partner, Gabrielle:
Here is my interpretation of Dr Jordan B. Petersons rule "Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world". I interpret this as People can choose to do good or bad, and often it can be tough to do good, and easier to do bad. Lyrics from Morrisey of the band The Smiths reflect this same sentiment "It's so easy to laugh, It's so easy to hateIt takes guts to be gentle and kind". People often focus on the bad things happening around them and the people doing it. You have to find your inner strength and choose to do good, so that your life can be infinitely better, so that you can lose your bitterness and resentment, and that the lives of those around you can improve. Focusing on the bad part of life, the world, and people, can get you down into a bad downward spiral of thoughts that will make you feel like revenge towards humanity and being. Obviously, people have every reason to be bitter about these things, but it does not contribute to a healthy state of mind. This is why people need to focus on the small things they ARE able to change. Living well and being successful in your personal life WILL have a positive impact and influence on those around you. Yep.
Gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness:
I was first introduced to gratitude, empathy and mindfulness when I started my job at Mecca in 2018. Mecca dedicated paid training hours to introduce new staff to practicing gratitude, empathy and mindfulness (gem) in both our working lives and personal lives. I found this felt like a therapy session, it really opened my eyes to appreciating what I have, listening to and respecting the people around me, and being mindful of my actions and words. This also ties into my value of family and friends and being grateful for the amazing people I have.
Evidential feedback from my mother, Carol:
I see in Erin a calmness when she is doing something mindful like painting, where she has to concentrate and that is a good thing for her. Passively watching videos, etc is not always ideal and she could explore a balance there. At times, I see that Erin is very grateful for all the opportunities she has had and everything good that has happened to her but sometimes I do see she takes things for granted.
Cherishing life with no zero days:
I truly believe in hard work and seeing life as an opportunity to learn, grow, succeed and enjoy it. One of my goals for 2021 is to have no zero days. This means doing or creating something each day, no matter how small it is as long as it contributes to my self growth.
Evidential feedback from my mother, Carol:
Maybe also included in the no zero days would be physical challenges/activities as these are important for a balanced life.
Being a self-reliant and competent individual:
I still live with my parents (I am 21, please don’t judge) and they recently went away for three weeks which left me with myself and their sick cat. During this time, I learnt a very valuable lesson, again from Dr Jordan B. Peterson, where you must “treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping” - Rule number 2. I took full responsibility for household including cooking and cleaning and chores, taking full care of a sick cat, feeding her, giving her medication each day, and disposing of her kitty litter waste, and then eventually, taking proper care of myself through diet, exercise, taking care of mental health and being completely self reliant.
Evidential feedback from my mother, Carol:
I see Erin as being very self-reliant and competent. She has always got on with her uni and paid work without really any pushing from me. She is less inclined to be competent when it comes to looking after my car unfortunately, as the rubbish and dirt has grown in it. Thankfully the cat survived her imposed stay with Erin very well and Erin did everything we asked of her in looking after the house and keeping it super tidy, as we had open homes during our absence. I guess it is fair to say that Erin can be a very self-reliant and competent individual when she chooses to be and it is about something she cares about.
My core personal strengths and limitations:
Evidence of strengths:
Communication skills and decision making:
I think I have always had good communication skills when working with other people. I have lead team projects in Uni because I could communicate well and make decisions. I enjoy working with other people and companies, as well as getting to know people in my personal life.
I am good in job interviews and can communicate clear and concisely.
Self awareness, self reflection, and honestly:
As mentioned in my values, I believe a strength of mine in my professional life is self awareness including honesty and self reflection. This ties into my communication skills where I can happily work with people and remain “interested, not interesting”.
Project management and time management skills:
In my final year of University, I completed a paper called Creative Workflows”. This paper consisted of how to management your time, money, task responsibility etc using a creative workflow model in a long term project. I genuinely gained an interest in this paper and still practice the methodologies and management skills when working on personal projects.
Creativity and generating creative ideas:
I have always enjoyed art particularly paiting using acrylics, digital art on my Ipad, creating and editing videos, and more recently, photography (which I am really bad at). All of these artistic skills I use in both my daily habits, hobbies and also my professional/educational life.
I began the Creative Technologies degree because I knew I was a creative person and thrived in a creative environment - not because I was particularly tech savvy when I was 18... I loved coming up with creative project ideas that generally included a mixture of art and design and interactive technologies. This included my final project in Uni which was a group project called Horotiu. Horotiu was a screen-based, interactive installation In Aotea Square that educated the public on the Maori mythology and history of Auckland CBD. This was done through hand-drawn animation (my project partner), lighting design and interactivity.
Task: Using the evidence gathered, describe your strengths and limitations.
Explain a situation where you have had an ethical decision to make. Discuss how you weighed up the values involved in that decision, the decision you made and the consequences of the action you took.
When I was in first year of Uni, I was absolutely desperate for money and decided to work 3-4 days a week while studying full time. This did have an impact of my learning journey and grades and I definitely regret it. That's what Studylink is for!
Describe how your culture has influenced your values and identity.
I think what is most notable about Kiwi culture, stemming from Maori culture, that has influenced my values and identity is kaitiakatanga (being one with the environment, and respecting the land) and manaakitanga (being hospitable).
Kaitiakatanga has influenced me to value respectfulness of myself and others, and further having gratitude, empathy and mindfulness for the people around me; collegues, friends, family.
Manaakitanga has influenced me to value the people around me as individuals and treat them as my whanau. This also ties into self aware in my actions of treating people; being welcoming, “interested, not interesting”.
Evaluate your strengths and limitations in terms of your learning and career development
In a learning or career environment, my communication skills and decision making skills has helped me become the young, ambitious person that I am today. I strived for a degree with high grades that I absolutely loved, I worked alongside individuals, other businesses and industry standard mentors to further my learning and career development. I am grateful to have an ambition to connect with the people around me - everyone has something to offer, everyone has a talent.
What I noticed in studying Creative Technologies is when working in groups there always needs to be a chief decision maker. This was something we practiced in the first year or so. When it is hard to come up with project ideas or move into the next phase of a project there can be several difficult decision on where to navigate the project i.e do we include this feature? is it useful? I found it was a good skill to quickly analyze the situation and make a decision to continue the flow of project. Our lecturers would always say, “just make a decision on something and START IT, whatever it is, and then make more decisions and KEEP GOING”
Identify which of your strengths might help you in your learning journey and how they might intersect with learning obstacles.
One of my strengths, being a good decision maker, I think will help me in my learning journey. But I am not necessarily a good problem solver (that I have noticed) which is what a developer is when programming. I am hoping to grow my problem solving skills throughout this course with all of the individual and group projects.
Share an example from your experience of where you were trying to work productively with others, but there was resistance or tension. Discuss the strategies you used at that time, how effective they were, and your reflections on what other strategies you would try now, and why.
I remember in a group project in uni where we were creating a hypothetical application called Ecocery. Ecocery was a phone app to help users purchase environmentally food products when grocery shopping. You would scan the barcode, and information on the products ingredients, packaging, water footprint and carbon footprint, and how environmentally the brands company is as a whole, would pop up on the screen and give it an overall rating.
I decided to create the hypothetical app using Wix, which contained a section dedicated to informative article on how food impacts the environment. One team member wrote an article about transport for the website which I felt was not relevant and shouldn't be on the website as it is about food. This did create tension between the team member and myself but we came to a rational decision to re-write an article together that was more relevant. We got an A for the project!