Do what you love
There are several choices and experiences in life that can change who you are and the way of thinking forever. Personally, I believe the major change in my life occurred when I moved from Albania to the USA with a great opportunity that AADF granted me. I started my journey with an internship in Rad Science Solution, which is a science-based assessment organization committed to serving students, workers, life-long learners, and other key stakeholders by providing personalized information as they navigate the 21st Century. While this, it allows me to continue doing what I enjoy most doing and that is programming. Not to mention that includes java and python developer. RAD Science envisions a society in which individuals have an enhanced awareness of their social, emotional, and academic learning, enabling them to be contributing global citizens and strengthen the global workforce. This mission made me love my job position and all my coworkers as well.
On my second day, the staff welcomed me with a lunch, celebrating my arrival and position to the company and in United States in general. This teamwork and coworkers that support me each and every day that help me gain all the necessary knowledge in order to improve myself in certain criteria. With that being said, these skills led to me presenting myself in the first start up project called “Development and Launch of a SELF+e for Corrections Suite”. I have become familiar with different assessment methodologies for measuring factors such as grit, collaboration, resilience, communication style, and curiosity. These include self-report, forced-choice, and situational judgment tasks.
The team leader never treated me like an intern, they trusted me with many inspirational tasks. These responsibilities strengthen my knowledge in java and in Talend (A Cloud Data Integration Leader (modern ETL).
After two months of working intensively for this project, my responsibility was to present the results of our middleware in two most famous Correction Institutions in Louisiana, in “Dixon Correctional Institute” and in maximum-security prison “The Louisiana State Penitentiary”. Visiting their spaces and especially education building inside their territories was a tremendously eye-opening experience. The prisoners and the staff of education liked what we had to offer and this inspired me to do more of this and this was meant for me to continue this route of this job. Prior to that day, my entire perspective on all of these institutions changed completely. They provided for custody, care, control and treatment of adjudicated offenders through enforcement of laws and management of programs designed to ensure the safety of the public, staff, and offenders and reintegrate offenders into society.
I am very proud to have the opportunity to do what I love and to overcome and learn many different issues that are faced in the USA.
I am currently still working for this project, facing different issues and completing each request to create the best product and end result/solution. This is currently my third month, learning in unlimited directions, not only in programming but in many different fields. I still cannot understand how time is flying by so fast, reasonably it is because I am doing what I love.
Rezarta Kadaifciu
