Mentorship and Misspellings
November 17, 2023
What I'm Listening To
'We all know it gets difficult being an adult...'
Story From The Week
A few months back, I stumbled into a new mentorship opportunity when someone from the University of Texas messaged me on LinkedIn, asking if I'd be up for mentoring a student in the STEM Muse Mentorship program.
Naturally, I seized the chance—it was a chance for me to check off one of my goals for the year.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I'm face-to-face (virtually) with my mentee. She's a powerhouse—a Chemistry major with an interest for software development, a mentor herself, a leader in her workplace, and a PhD student. As I rambled on about my tech journey, I couldn't help but wonder what on earth I could offer this woman. My lips were spewing words, but inside, I was having a full-blown imposter syndrome party.
Yet, despite wrestling with imposter syndrome in every meeting, I keep showing up. I aim to show up to every Zoom call with humility and a keen ear. Even when I don't feel like the wise mentor I want to be, I recognize the value of a listening ear and a kindred spirit. Being a woman in STEM, I recognize that my vulnerability and honesty carry weight—even in the absence of sage advice.
Besides, I'm on a mission to level up my mentoring game, and everyone has to start somewhere, right? I'm in need of practice, and I'm thankful for a mentee who's patient enough to endure my occasional response, "I don't really have an answer to that question.”
What Did I Learn?
This week, my boss uncovered yet another spelling mishap in my code during a PR review. It marks the second time this month, and frankly, I'm amazed it's only the second slip-up. We've been working on a licensing project at work, and for some reason, I can't seem to remember how to spell the word "license."
This mishap got me thinking… there must be a spell checker plugin for VSCode! And guess what? There is.
If you, like me, constantly struggle with the positioning of "i" and "e,” do yourself a favor and install it immediately.
What Made Me Confused...
To be candid, I encountered an issue this week that had me stumped, and eventually, I gave up.
It’s a busy season at my company, and this week my plate was full with addressing several QA kickback items while simultaneously sketching out low-fidelity designs for an upcoming project.
In one of my QA kickback tickets, I saw that a “Save” button was randomly disabled even while the form was in use. Upon investigation, I traced the issue back to a recurrent API call in a parent component triggering the form state to refresh every minute or so. Try as I might, I could not figure out how to fix the problem… so I didn’t.
Given the absence of user complaints thus far, I decided to postpone addressing it for now. Sometimes, in the hustle of a busy time, certain bugs might need to wait for their turn, even if they tag along with a release.
It's just one of those weeks.