The biggest area of growth I’ve experienced so far as a Vivello is definitely handling physical things. I’m usually a software person, so getting comfortable with 3D printing, sanding, and all the hands-on tools in the Burling basement was a real shift for me. It’s been a surprisingly nice change of pace to work with something tangible instead of just staring at a screen, and I’ve learned way more from just messing with the equipment than I expected to.
As for weaknesses, I’d say I’m a bit of a perfectionist, especially when it comes to things I’m writing or creating for other people to see. I’ll rewrite a display description five times because it doesn’t sound quite right, or spend way too long tweaking something that was probably fine after the second draft. It’s not necessarily a bad instinct to have, but it does slow me down, and I think I could be more efficient if I trusted my first or second attempt more often.
My favorite thing about being a Vivero Fellow has actually been helping other Vivellos. Because there’s a new batch of them I’ve been getting a lot of questions (and 3D printing requests). I enjoy it when someone comes to me stuck on a problem and walking them through it until it clicks!
Looking at all three of these together, I want to focus my training and professional development on data skills going forward. This might seem like a disconnect from my growth area, since that’s been more about physical making, but I’m a senior now and thinking hard about my post-grad job search (especially when it’s been eating up so much of my time). My CS and Math background, plus my research experience with data processing over the summer, makes data skills the most useful thing I can build on right now. I want to be intentional with my remaining time as a Fellow to set myself up for what’s next.
For October and November, I’m proposing PySpark and SQL as my two trainings. PySpark connects directly to the data engineering work I did during my research internship, and going deeper into it will help me talk about that experience more confidently in interviews. SQL is one of those skills that shows up in basically every technical job posting I’ve seen, so building it up now feels like a practical investment. Both trainings should give me concrete, resume-ready skills while I still have the structure and support of the fellowship to learn them in. And who knows, maybe one day someone will come down and ask for help with one of them!