Since I am on the road to becoming a young professional, I am learning every day. Not only do I absorb my classroom material, but I also learn about myself. Through my experience, I gained a clearer understanding of my inborn talents that I’ve shaped into “strengths.”
What are your top 5 strengths? According to the Gallup StrengthsFinder Assessment, my top strengths are:
- Woo (Winning Others Over): natural communicative abilities that allow others to feel comfortable after an initial meeting
- Individualization: finding the individual characteristics of each person that make them a valuable asset to others
- Communication: easily being able to break apart ideas to others and write in a fluid, engaging way
- Belief: having a strong sense of “ground,” or faith, that drives actions
- Responsibility: pertaining to a strong sense of duty
How do you see those playing a role in your current life? In your academics? I feel that my strengths frequently guide my life. I get a thrill from having someone who was originally “closed off” to open up. When I was young, I was the most social one out of my immediate family. There’s a story my mother tells me of going the the Newport Aquarium as a toddler: my family was getting tired and wanted to leave. However, as the elevator slid open, I stared at the crowded room of people and candidly shouted, “Hi, everyone!” Everyone in the elevator smiled and laughed, which relieved my family’s exhausted tension. Regarding “individualization,” I enjoy giving encouragement to friends, family, and even complimenting strangers. I deeply feel that everyone is valuable and deserves to know it often, which combines with my “belief” trait. Next, I utilize “communication” in my volunteer writing position at the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation (NOAH: www.albinism.org). Every three months since 2012, I write articles on varying topics, including accessible technology, albinism news, and living with albinism. I love combining similes, imagery, nouns, and verbs into something exciting, beautiful, and even educational.
Academically, I heavily use “responsibility” by investing myself in schoolwork. I find I am a good initiator at group discussion, allowing us to conduct productive meetings. Also, it is easy for me to find where each person could contribute based on their particular talents and interests. When it comes to presenting, I enjoy the challenge of captivating the audience. Recently, I surprised one of my teammates after a presentation for my Fundamentals of Engineering course, who said, almost shocked, “Wow, you did really good!”
How does knowing your strengths support or change your thoughts about your future goals? Initially, my top four strengths were surprising and even somewhat disappointing: as a prospective engineer, I hoped to have traits such as, “ideation,” “achiever,” or, “strategic,” easily definable as a “typical engineer.” Yet as I continued to mull over my results, I came to accept them as who I was. Though “typical” engineers may not be thought of as social or great communicators, I am happy to be an “outlier,” so to speak. I feel that my social traits allow me to contradict the “engineer” stereotype, enhancing the discipline as one of diverse humans.
How might you utilize your strengths to achieve your future personal and/or professional goals? As I’m on the road to become a computer science engineer, I feel I can effectively communicate ideas, feeling strongly that they are so, convincing others of its prospect, and carry it out. I believe my diverse skill set could be an asset to a future employer, allowing me to achieve many functions.
Personally, however, I know my skills are meant for me. Since I have a rare form of albinism with associated health conditions, my communication skills can be used to win over the doctors and researchers who could potentially find us a cure. I feel it is my responsibility to advocate for myself and my friends with this syndrome to have a future worth fighting for.