Recently I watched the Robert Sapolsky Stanford lecture series about behavioural biology and the cumulative effects of centuries of evolution on the human brain. One of the things Sapolsky emphasises again and again, is that even the most extreme set of environmental /neurological conditions (i.e a genetic predilection for disease x, or keeping a child in a cupboard) don’t determine an outcome.They can contribute to making an outcome more or less likely, or indeed, possible. But in the end the process by which we arrive at the people we become is infinitely opaque and infinitely complicated.
I don’t really know why I’m mentioning this, only that when you start coding it must be natural to begin to think of everything as code, including patterns of behaviour and thought. How infinite complexity can arise from simple chemical instructions. The brain is also like code, in that whoever wrote it, clearly wasn’t doing their refactoring effectively. It’s full of dead links and banal repetitions.
Anyway, this is where I’m supposed to be writing about the values I have. There’s an interesting bit in Sapolsky’s empathy lectures, where he talks about how people who record higher ‘empathy’ scores on tests are fundamentally more useless in an actual crisis, because their empathy centres become easily overwhelmed, paralysing them from taking action. I only mention this by way of saying, it sounds nice to say “I have value x” but whether or not that reflects in your behaviour is something else entirely…
Once I got offered a lot of money to go and do comms for a bank. On the one hand, I could have definitely used a lot of money. On the other hand, what’s the point in having a heart and mind if you’re going to waste it all writing marketing copy for ANZ? In the end I decided not to take the job, even though it would have meant I had more time to spend on my own work. But I would have been embarrassed to tell people what I did for a living. Every now & again I think maybe I should have taken the job offer. But tmaybe I can go and work in their app development team instead, which is somehow infinitely better. Don’t ask me how. I just feel it in my heart.
The values I learned from my family were curiosity, willingness to try/fail, kindness/respect for others. In terms of identity, I don’t know. They say you spend the first half of your life trying to establish an identity and the second half trying to lose it. At the moment my identity consists of learning about the tudors, and watching Survivor. I once did the strengths finder test, as part of a job application, and my first strength was blankspace. Anyway, strengths finder tests are just horoscopes for the Myers Briggs crowd, so let’s just say, with full scientific integrity, I'm a Capricorn, which means I’m extremely determined, hard working, and single minded in pursuit of goals. Luckily I have Gemini rising, to take the edge off.
My limitations in terms of learning/career development are that I spent my twenties working in children’s bookshops, which is a very very good job if you don’t care about money. I am starting from scratch with coding, so there is a huge amount to learn if I decide to try and switch careers. I also know virtually nothing about programming, and so am starting with even less knowledge than others, who can effortlessly uninstall the bing taskbar on their mother’s computer without first having to read ten articles on the subject. I am committed to coding everyday/putting aside extra time to try and meet these limitations, and asking my more experienced cohort for help!
I'm nervous about the group exercises, particularly because I am behind most people in terms of tech skills and don't want to slow anyone down! I’ve done a few collaborative projects before. The process was; discuss an idea together, outline the individual parts, discuss a time frame, delegate work to each individual and then amalgamate the parts. If there is a conflict, one of our strategies was to have each person come up with their ideal version of the solution. These solutions are then discussed communally, and either combined, or one solution is chosen as better.