Human Skills Reflection

*I try to use privacy‑focused software whenever possible – for example, Proton Mail for my email.*

Changing How I Think

I learned that I can deliberately shift the way I think. At first I slipped easily into a programming mindset and worried that doing so would erase the other ways I process the world it felt like handing over part of my sense of self. Then I realized it isn't a black or white choice. I can drift back to my natural mental habits whenever I need to.

To give an example (so this doesn't sound mindless, pun intended), my brain loves making connections between the seemingly unrelated. Once I called an all day bus pass a "Kafka."" My friend asked, "What do you mean?"" After half an hour of puzzling, she finally got it: Day Tripper - a Beatles song - a beetle is an insect - Franz Kafka's "Metamorphoses." Her brain works the same way... it could just as easily land on Ovid.

Why Dev Academy Teaches Human Skills

The program emphasizes three pillars values, empathy, and self-awareness because they prepare us to build technology that truly serves people.

1. Values Give Purpose and Ethical Direction

• Motivation: When students link personal values (social impact, privacy, sustainability) to their projects, they stay engaged longer and push through inevitable frustrations.
• Decision making: Coding schools encourage asking "What does this choice mean for the user or society?" early on whether it's securing data, picking an open source license, or opting for energy efficient algorithms.
• Career alignment: Employers increasingly seek engineers whose values match the company's mission (privacy first, accessibility first). Surfacing values early helps graduates find roles where they'll thrive.

2. Empathy Creates User Centric, Inclusive Products

• Understanding users: Persona work, user interviews, and accessibility audits teach students to see beyond the screen and consider diverse abilities, cultures, and contexts.
• Collaboration: Empathy equips learners to give and receive feedback constructively, resolve conflicts, and foster a psychologically safe environment key predictors of successful project delivery.
• Market relevance: Products that genuinely solve real user pain points outperform technically brilliant but disconnected solutions.

3. Self Awareness Fuels Continuous Improvement

• Metacognition: Self aware students recognize when they're stuck, identify knowledge gaps, and choose the right learning strategy (pair programming, spaced repetition, project based practice).
• Bias detection: Awareness helps future engineers spot assumptions about gender, geography, or technical feasibility that could unintentionally bias code or data models.
• Resilience: Debugging can be emotionally taxing. Knowing one's stress triggers enables healthier habits (breaks, incremental testing), reducing burnout.

Personal Takeaways

I enjoyed the human skills component of Foundations. As I mentioned earlier, the exercise of shifting from one way of thinking to another resonated strongly. The idea of creating ethical software struck a chord, prompting a deep dive into web accessibility that I found genuinely rewarding. I'm looking forward to the weekly human skills sessions with Rosie.