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Personal Progress Update #1: 2022-12-11

Hello again! Thank you for stopping by my blog again.

This week, I want to kick off a new type of blog post - Personal Progress Updates. In the same ways I've shared/compiled some tips for goal-setting and accomplishment, I also regularly review these and revise my own approach towards meeting my goals. As I'm on my own journey (professionally, personally, academically), I'd like to share that with you, my readers. It'll be an intermittent frequency at first (coming in handy this week, as I haven't gotten to prepare a new "learned" topic... oops), but may find a regular cadence in the future (such as monthly).

  1. Professional
  2. Personal
  3. Academic
  4. Summary/Links
  5. Conclusion

Professional

I've worked to stay on top of market trends (technologies, tools, techniques); I hope to make this into a future blog article. This comes in the form of the SQL Discord followed by various technology subreddits (CS Career Questions, CS Majors, Learn Programming, and Learn Python).

In addition, I've started researching cloud certifications to get me exposure to these systems. My time in Cloud has always been limited and read-only/user access. From the research I've done, a learning path might look like:

Finally, I made some minor resume edits based on an industry professional's recommendation. Previously, I had it in the order of "Summary", "Experience", "Education", "Skills", "Technologies", "Licenses and Certifications". The expert recommended I move my "Skills" and "Technologies" sections immediately below my summary so they're "front and center" when future hiring managers view my application.

Personal

Personal ventures have included a physical goal, a technological goal, and an emotional/mental goal:

  • Physical:
  • As stated in my previous post about goal-setting and levelling up in the job market, I have the goal of walking for twenty minutes a day (around a mile in distance). This isn't my goal forever, but it's where I feel is sustainable with my current commitments in life.
  • Other than being sick with the cold/flu, I've managed to achieve this each day. More specifically, I found the "sweet spot" for success in this around lunch time (11:00a - 1:00p range).
  • Technological:
  • I've been navigating the contents of Python Programming by John Zelle (specifically, the 3rd edition). I've consulted this book several times dating back to the first edition nearly ten years ago. In August of 2022, I decided I wanted to "finish" the book from cover-to-cover (reading all contents and working all the exercise problems).
  • Life got extremely busy around Aug/Sep of this year, so I stepped away from this side-quest (having made it through seven chapters in a month's time). I've now started back in Chapter 8 ("Loop Structures and Booleans"), working through the practice problems at a rate of a couple per day. I'd like to finish the book before the new year (as an ambitious goal) or before my next set of graduate school classes start on 2023-01-09 (as a more realistic goal).
  • Emotional/Mental:
  • As the holidays creep closer and closer, some of us find ourselves in need of recharge and rest between social gatherings and holiday events. I've emphasized this point with myself and will allow myself all the time I need to enjoy the holidays myself and enjoy the time with family/friends with a "full social battery" (or as best as I can do)

Academic

As the new semester approaches (Jan 9th, 2023), I hope to approach this semester with an open mind and good ~~habits~~ routines in place to obtain everything I can from this academic experience.

For those of you who don't know, I am pursuing my Master's degree in Computer Science from the Online Master of Science Computer Science (OMS CS) program at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). I have yet to complete my first class (as mentioned above, this semester became too busy and I had to drop my course to best handle other commitments), but am ecstatic to be on this learning venture.

For the Fall 2022 term, I had tried CS 6750: Human-Computer Interaction. Now that life is a bit more calm, I'd like to build some confidence by starting (and completing) a course within my comfort zone: CS 6400: Database System Concepts and Design. Even with my background enjoying a focus on querying with Structured Query Language (SQL) and some Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) approaches, I would like to take away more efficient ways to perform these tasks and learn about other roles that relate to databases (should I want to pivot again 😉).

Conclusion

Yet again, I surprised myself. I started this post without a clear idea of where I could start, but the words and topic just flowed.

In regard to this new style of post ("Personal Progress Update"), I thoroughly enjoyed it. Accountability aside from publishing my progress for the world to follow along, writing this post forced me to organize and assess my current-state so I can best achieve the future-state of where I want to be. I'm looking forward to continuing this series in the future.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Until the next time we learn (or discuss) something together, have a wonderful Monday!