Identity, Values, and Strenghts

Explain a situation where you have made an ethical decision. Discuss how you weighed up the values involved in that decision, the decision you made, and how you reflect on the decision now.

About 7 or 8 years ago I was working in a pub in Ireland. We all knew there was someone amongst the staff that had been stealing from other people backpacks and wallets cause money kept disappearing. And this had been going on for months but we couldn’t find the culprit.

One night I finished my shifts 5 minutes earlier than expected while everyone else was still working downstairs. When I went upstairs to get my handbag from the staff room I caught one of the chefs rummaging through a co-worker bag. He straight away fled the room. I immediately checked my wallet and discovered that money were missing. At that point I was sure that he was the one who had been stealing.

At that point I didn’t know what to do. I know that the right thing to do was to go straight to the pub manager and report what I had witnessed, but at the same time I was hesitant because this guy had a family and two young kids. And deep down I was also scared that the guy would come after me because I reported him.

After talking to a colleague, I discovered that there were already suspicions about the guy but he was never caught red handed before that night. At the end I went to my manager and told him what I had seen and the guy got fired straight away.

Looking back and reflecting on this now, I am so glad and proud of the decision I took as stealing is something I do not approve, doesn’t matter the reason why someone does it.

Describe how your culture and the people around you have influenced your values and identity.

I grew up in a small mountain town in Northern Italy surrounded by the typical Italian family-oriented family! I reckon that our identity is shaped during our childhood and teen years, and the environment and people we grow up around really influence our values and as a consequence our identity.

Growing up, my parents had a hospitality business for over 20 years, working long hours for 6 or even 7 days a week, with barely no time off. They definitely thought me what working hard means, but at the same time after seeing them having zero work-life balance, I know now that I don’t want this for my future and my family. And this is one of the reason why I am doing this journey with Dev Academy.

Identify your strengths and how they will support you during your learning journey.

One of my main strengths is that I have an awesome attention to details and this has been pretty handy when coding as I can pick up mistakes fairly easily, especially spelling.

I am a very curious person who is also a bit stubborn, so naturally I am great at problem solving. I don’t give up easily and I am sure that t his will help me with the many challenges I will have to face during this journey.

Evaluate your limitations in terms of your learning and career development. How might these affect your learning journey?

I am pretty bad at time management and often find myself being late. This mainly happens for two reasons: I always think I have plenty of time, and I am way too optimistic about how much I can achieve in a short amount of time. I think I am getting a bit better at this by planning my day and week ahead and try to stick to the plan.

I struggle to focus and I get distracted super easily. My mind tends to wonder and all of a sudden I find myself googling the most odd stuff… so very often it’s just really hard to be productive! In the last couple of weeks I have been trailing some productivity and time management technique - like Toggl timer and the pomodoro technique – and I think I have been able to stay focus more.

I definitely lack of imagination and I am the least creative person in this planet – I am very much a technical person! This will definitely be a problem when we have to come up with new ideas, especially when it is design related or making up some sort of stories for example. At this point of my life I have realized that there is not much I can do about this. I just know that creativity it’s not one of my strengths and I am fine with it.

Share an example of when you were trying to work productively with others, but there was resistance or tension. Discuss strategies you tried at the time, how effective they were, and your reflections on what other strategies you would try now and why.

Last year I went back to Uni and that involved a lot of group projects. In our group there was this girl who was particularly stubborn and overly self-confident. One time she was working by herself on a portion of our group work and she got the instructions completely wrong. We tried and tried to explain to her that she was doing something completely different from what was required but she wouldn’t listen to any of us and instead kept doing her own thing. The other three of us were really pissed off and didn’t want to lose marks on that assignment just because she was stubborn, so we told her not to worry and that we were doing all the work. And so we did.

Reflecting on this now, I know that this isn’t the best way to deal with this kind of situations. We should have probably tried harder and make her understand what was the project about but at that time we couldn’t be bothered anymore with her and we just wanted to be done and dusted with the assignment.