Weekly Journal : Reflection

Mindfulness in the essence of engagement, [without it we are] frequently in error, but rarely in doubt. — Ellen Langer

Submission

Submit a Markdown formatted plain text file, named week02_reflection.md, to the individual portfolio_NETID repository provided for you in the course's Gitlab group. All submissions for this course will be based on only the version of your files in the provided Gitlab repository by 3:07am ET in the morning on the day after that given on the course Calendar (so it is effectively a few extra hours grace time past midnight).

Specification

Take time to show the development of your thoughts by describing what you have learned from specific, important, events during the project. These can be about anything useful, interesting, unexpected, controversial, or a spectacular success or failure that occurred during the week.

Reflect on something from at least four of the following sources (successful and negative/failed examples in the same source count as separate reflections):

• project event, e.g., design decision, hard debugging problem, difficulty/ease of adding a new feature, etc.
• teamwork experience, e.g., integrating team code, pair programming, late night, etc.
• something you deliberately tried that was outside your "comfort zone"
• reviewing a team mate's code
• refactoring your own code
• something useful you think will help you beyond this course or in the "real world"

To help you remember the sources of and linkages between some of the non-coding, thought-work, that you did during the week, summarize at least two of the following sources:

• readings assigned or that you found on your own
• course code examples, labs, or tutorials you tried
• design decision you or the team made, include the pros and cons of different alternatives that were considered

To help you process the feedback you received this week and to help us ensure it was well communicated, describe what you learned during any of these Teaching Team interactions:

• areas to improve discussed during your mentoring meeting
• analysis and code masterpiece feedback from another TA
• office hours with Professor Duvall or Graduate TA Li
• student code examples discussed during class

Remember when writing a personal reflection, you are offering your opinions. However you are also demonstrating that you have thought about the issue carefully and, from multiple perspectives. For example, you may want to start with something like these:

I used to believe …, however, after considering the effect of … my perception has shifted ….
Once seemed obvious that … yet now it is more tempting to ask ….
Perhaps …. is an assumption which relies too heavily on … Therefore it may be more accurate to suggest…

If you are having trouble thinking about what to write in a journal entry, think about what you would possibly write as a status update to your future or past self on a social media site.