IT Student
My diverse life experience and work history has given me many soft skills that I am using in my studies, and I look forward to applying them in my new career.
The primary soft skills that I have devloped are team work & communication, discipline & self-management, and attention to detail.
I have also begun developing technical skills in HTML, Python, computer troubleshooting and database principles at Wintec.
While in the army, I worked within a section that was required to work together in order to accomplish the goals set by our chain of command. High standards had to be maintained by everyone, and it was never good enough to blame individual shortcomings on one person. All efforts were team efforts, and every section member had to constantly work with the rest in order to reach the common goal.
In my time working in Canada and America, I was required to live and work with a crew of up to 20 people from a variety of countries and backgrounds. Conflicts had to be resolved and personal differences managed in order for the team to get the job done, and efforts had to be made to coordinate vehicle movements between members of the crew working in different locations.
Motivation is what drives us to try our best, but discipline is what keeps us trying until we are the best. As I progressed through different roles and life experiences, I began to appreciate this skill so much more. Discipline was invaluable in enabling me to set and achieve goals at work, in the gym and even with learning music.
My employer in America had a fleet of Peterbilt trucks that he maintained with great pride, and it was imperative that at the end of every day they were cleaned (as best we could), lined up and left looking professional, despite how tired and over the day everyone felt. At the beginning of the season we found this task very easy to accomplish, because we were all fresh, highly motivated and excited to be driving a fleet of big, powerful American trucks. 6 months and many 18 hour harvest days later, it required much more of a conscious effort. It took discipline to consistently maintain the professional standard even when all I and everyone else wanted to do was get some sleep.
Weight limits had to be observed when loading trucks in order to comply with local transport laws and avoid penalties. In my role as a farm assistant, careful attention had to be paid to cow health, milk quality and record keeping. Lapses in standards could result in fines or unnecessary and expensive cow health issues.
During my studies at Wintec I have been developing my attention to detail with programming and website development. Careful attention has to be paid to syntax and formatting, and I am developing my skills at efficient and thorough debugging by utilising this skill.
At Wintec I am working on the following skills:
At Wintec I have learned to effectively design and build a website, writing a structure in HTML and styling it with CSS. I have learned how to utilise colours, font pairings and page structure in order to maximise user accessibility and content engagement.
I am learning the fundamentals of programming with the Python language. As progress in our course we are constantly challenged to write simple but practical programs and functions to reinforce the skills we are learning.
I am currently learning the fundamentals of database principles. I am learning how to design a database model using an ERD, and then implement it into a functioning database with Microsoft Access.