This semester for ICS 414 was interesting. How I envisioned it would play out and the reality of what actually happened did not line up with one another. I understand and accept that I did not perform as I would have liked to. Although I am not one hundred percent proud of my work I did give it my best effort. It was frustrating that not all of my code was published. Sometimes I would have to stop mid-way through a task and switch to another because of an unsolvable issue. This was a little disheartening not being able to reflect on the effort committed. Reflecting on my journey this semester has helped me to realize a lot and just in this class or assignments alone, there is more to it
In the beginning, my SMART goals were to “Have the ability to fix an old website and revise it to have modern components”, “Be able to coordinate efficiently and effectively in a medium-sized group of devs.”, and “Have a deeper understanding html/css/js and the components that go into making a website”. I feel like I was able to complete about fifty percent of the SMART goals I set out. I do admit that I did not review my SMART goals as often as I should have and felt like that would have helped to motivate myself and realign my priorities. I do feel like I am able to revise a website to modern components. I feel confident it would get done slowly but I am also better at being able to troubleshoot issues. I do not feel that I was able to coordinate efficiently and effectively with my team members. I did try and I did initiate a lot, but I do not see the results reflecting the effort. Lastly, I do feel like I have a better understanding of front-end development. In my opinion, the work was difficult and it took me longer than most to get things finished. I spent a lot of time looking up definitions and use cases. Items like “useTracker()”, bootstrap.js, forms, and hooks just to name a few were difficult for me to comprehend.
In the beginning, I thought our teamwork was pretty good. I made a separate discord in order to communicate and collaborate with each other better. Me and a couple of my teammates initiated meet-up times, scheduled our teammates’ schedules to have as little conflict as possible, and organized resources and task management. I would say about half the team contributed to everything not regarding completing tasks. I understand that there were bi-weekly milestone reviews but I did not view non-task-related issues as part of that review. It was only recently during this reflection period that I started to realize the importance of proper communication and teamwork. There were times when a member would do another person’s task or tasks were being recreated even when completed. There were numerous amount of times when I or another member would try to communicate with other team members only to be replied to with silence. This was more prevalent the further we got towards the semester.
A little bit of backstory into how things started. This semester is my last semester at UH Manoa granted nothing goes. I also started a coding internship at the beginning of the summer and continued it throughout my final semester while being a full-time student in work and time-intensive classes. I am also in the Air National Guard. Throughout the semester I have been sick on and off and basically experienced Murphy’s first law in full. I do not say these things to have a pity party, I have come to realize a little late that work/life balance is a real thing and should not be shrugged off. I grew up with the mentality of just tough it through and do not quit, quitting is for losers. Although school is my number one priority, I did not stop my internship because I thought I could just press through it. I realize now that it is okay to take breaks and stop the internship. If I had done that earlier in the semester I feel like I would have gained more from not only this class but my other classes as well.
In summary, I understand my shortcomings and accept responsibility for them. I can not change the past and after my reflection, the best thing to do is to learn from it so I can be better for the future. The career field of a programmer is a constantly evolving field. Even if we think we are adequate there are still improvements to be made and things to be learned. For example, when Hack HUI was made with Semantic it was a popular styler and would have been hard to think of improvements at the time. Now we are using Bootstrap as a better more updated styler.