I had many goals for this work term, but the ones listed below were the most important to me.
A goal I held at high priority for this work term was improving my communication. To be specific, I wanted to become a more reliable co-worker and teammate through my everyday actions. From my first work term to now, I am very happy with the progress I’ve made. There were frequent stand up meetings and weekly sprint meetings that allowed for opportunities to share my current status, discuss pitfalls and give my own input on how the product could be improved. When I needed clarification or was stuck, I did not hesitate to ask my supervisor or co-workers for assistance. In future work terms, I plan to continue improving this area and take the initiative to broaden my social network at work by finding opportunities to share and receive input.
My next goal was to work on personal organization skills and managing my time well. Considering the nature of my work, I’m happy with my progress towards this goal. During each sprint, I would always draft a work plan and create simple to-do lists. This helped to keep myself on track, and getting deliverables in on time was never an issue. Like with any skill though, there are always improvements to be made. In the future, I will start to leverage prioritized to-do lists and consider work item interdependencies so that I can spot potential pitfalls early on and spend my time more effectively.
My last goal was to learn and become skilled in Python. My co-worker assisted me in reaching this goal; I gave and received in-depth code reviews, and I handled the majority of the backend to the platform. I used Python coding techniques I learned from previous co-op work terms and used tools to keep my code clean and readable. I was motivated to write structured code that could be built upon and maintained with minimal effort.