A Year in Review 2020-21

Wesley Reed | Year-In-Review

What specific experiences in the past year have had the most impact on your personal and professional trajectory?

The biggest experience I have had in the last year has been working at the UC IT Solutions Center (ITSC). They have been gracious enough to bring me on as a graduate assistant to help with my tuition costs, and I continue to learn more there than in my classes.

I am now the lead developer on multiple projects, as well as being in charge of server maintenance and administration, development operations, office administration, and some client relations.

As I mentioned last year, now that I have become a project lead at ITSC part of my responsibilities are to delegate tasks to the other people on the project and trust that they will get the job done. I continue to struggle with delegation because I like to own what I’m delivering and see to it personally. Every time I delegate a task, part of me worries that it might not get done, it might not get done to the level of quality that I hold myself to, or it might take longer than if I were to do it and in many cases it does take longer. I’ve been working a lot with my supervisor to overcome this, and know how to delegate and hold others accountable for their work.

Due to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), I was forced to work from home for a significant portion of the year. This experience was very interesting, however at the end of it I was very ready to return to the office. Moving forward, I don’t think I would want to work from home for extended periods of time because my brain needs the physical separation of work and home so that it can stop working when work is over. Throughout this season I found myself continuing to work late into the evening or thinking about work while I was doing other things. I also enjoy the environment of being in an office and interacting with my coworkers.

Articulate specific personal and/or professional goals for the next year.

In the next year I hope to:

  • Complete senior design and deliver a high quality application to our client
  • Have fun with the UC band
  • Graduate with my bachelors and masters degree