Week 19

This week, rather than sharing technical knowledge I’ll share with you 3 short stories about my personal experience that impacted the way I see the world and the way I perform at the internship.

Things out of my control

Last week I had to pause my internship for exactly one week. The reason is that I got sick and I wasn’t feeling very well. At first I thought that I could still work but just not to my 100%. The academy staff made me realize that it was better to dedicate myself to rest and come back next week.

This felt really frustrating, because I’m so close to my mock interview and then to my real interview, and getting sick just seem like a big waste of my time. But when this feeling of frustration passed I had a really humbling thought, something I already knew.

There will always be things that I can’t control. Bad things are going to happen, and the way you react to them matters. So in this case I didn’t decide to get sick of course, but I had to deal with it even if I didn’t like it. Overall it was a good opportunity to see where I’m standing in my emotional intelligence.

My first time interviewing

I had the chance to interview a great coworker of mine today. I conducted a technical interview where I measured his coding skills with a whiteboard program. And I learned a few things.

Creating a rubric for objectively evaluating someone is harder than it seems.
There is a lot of work from part of the interviewer before the actual interview. We should respect that more.
Is okay to let your interviewee struggle a little bit. I tried to give him clues everytime he got a little stuck and that’s not really the point of the interview.

The habit of a good night sleep

I remember that in my first week during the internship we were taught about habits, and during several other readings/courses I learned the importance of a good night sleep for the brain. This week I got to combine both of them. I started a habit where I go to sleep at 12 and I wake up at 9 am. So I get a full 9 hours of sleep. I can’t stretch enough how different do I feel. Some things I have realized:

It’s very nice waking up and not feeling like sh!t. I actually feel rested.
I’m in a better mood.
When my time to sleep comes I don’t struggle that much to fall asleep.
I feel more productive overall.

Somethings that helped me achieve a better night sleep:

Always going to sleep and wake up at the same time. Helps your internal clock.
Avoid screens at least one hour before going to bed.
Avoid caffeine and naps after 4pm.
Exercise but not too late (at least 3 hours before going to bed)

All of this tips I got from the book Why do We Sleep by the Neuroscientist Matthew Walker. Great read.