Professional Development

Nearly a year after my last post, I have failed to consistently give project updates on the status of the Unintentional Calamity Project I have been working on for over five years now. While I do want to be more consistent with my updates, this inconsistent behavior is not unwarranted! From getting a new job to fighting with the U.S. healthcare system, I’ve been up to a lot. This isn’t even to mention the different projects that have popped up and continue to add on to my weekly routine. What have I been so busy with? I’m happy to share!

The shortfalls of the American education system has always been a huge source of frustration throughout my life. Ever since elementary school, I can remember having to deal with teachers who were under prepared or uncaring of the work they were doing. Considering the massive impact teachers have on the future of the nation, it has always bewildered me how much America is not invested in its education system. Additionally, it amazes me how much the education system itself is unwilling to change ancient ideology’s systemic issues that exist within its own the infrastructure. These seemingly harmless flaws in the American education system are collectively harming students, discouraging professionals from becoming teachers, and continue to support a system of oppression while benefiting the wealthy. Sooner or later, this system needs to change. In order to do this, I would like to explore what these systemic issues are, how it affects everyone, and how we might be able to solve these issues.

Anyone would be hard pressed to find someone who has not experienced a day where they were insanely focused. We all know what it feels like to be so enveloped in our thinking that we just lose track of time. Whether it is reading a book for hours on end, playing a video game and not realizing the sun has set, or working on a personal project only to glance at the clock and notice that six hours have magically passed, we all have had these special moments. This special moment has many names, but for the sake of conversation let us define this long-term focus as a State of Flow. This special state is really important to understand as it can be used as a tool rather than a random event that occurs in everyday life.

For any professional, sitting down and magically producing your best work is very hard to do. Humans, by their very nature, don’t do well with creating original, high quality content. There always has to be some iterative process. Unfortunately, the American portrayal of “original ideas” is often wildly ignorant of the history that directly contradicts the simplified American Dream success story. To break down these preconceptions and find out how “great minds” actually work, let’s look back at what famous inventors actually did.

One of the most important aspects I have identified for professional and personal development is having the proper outlets for creative expression. Humans always need some way to express how they are feeling. Often times that creative expression is shown thrown the arts. Dancing, singing, theater, or any other performative arts are obvious examples for conveying emotions that others can understand at a deep level. Paintings, books, photography and other timeless pieces of raw, captured emotion are just windows into what a person is feeling. Unfortunately, I can’t dance, I’m working on becoming a good writer, and my singing career died when I couldn’t find an a capella group to join, so let’s take a look at what creativity looks like for the less art-inclined folks.

Every professional has different needs to create a productive environment. Some people need to be in an office to help them focus. Others need a quiet space. Social settings help inspire some people while nature can be a good outlet for others. As I continue writing more content for the Unintentional Calamity Project I find that my needs to inspire creativity and cultivate motivation are not being met. In an attempt to solve the problem, here’s an outline of my professional motivation triggers and what might help me (and others reading this) explain how motivation works.

Working through a large, differently structured project such as making a book has taught me a lot. Not only am I learning more about the creative process that all writers have to go through, but I’m also learning more about a part of my professional appearance that I never got from twelve years of school: maintaining an online presence takes a huge amount of effort. The Unintentional Calamity Project has an online presence, but this is only part of my professional image that I want portrayed online.

One of the things that is not apparent in a large portion of the world of academia is how important documentation is. Smaller projects tend to have no need for documentation because the purpose of that small project is quite apparent. Programming assignments are often very focused on exploring one particular data structure or concept. The scope of a project tends to not breach multiple files. Additionally, the amount of time it takes to complete a homework assignment is never greater than one year. All of these factors make documentation at a small level quite useless as there is much work that needs to be done and never referenced again.

Creativity for a data scientist means something much different than any given artistic field. For the field of Data Science, creativity sprouts from collaboration and unique solutions to a given problem. While solution to a machine learning problem could be a beautiful orchestration of math and business mindset combined to present a beautiful, informative visualization, there are limits. A writers world is much more relaxed on creative guidelines, which is what I find I struggle with when trying to write a creative piece.