Sprint 4 · Extra credit · ~25 min · Optional · 5 pts
5 points. ~25 minutes. The Audit asked you to separate what you'd observed from what you'd interpreted. The honest question: did you?
If you've fallen behind on grades, this is a real path forward.
Each look-back asks you to revisit one piece of Sprint 1–3 work honestly. Complete it, then check-in with Prof. Sathya in class to get credit for your submission — work is reviewed and credited on the spot.
You don't have to do this. It's optional. It's here because the work itself is worth doing — and the points help if you need them.
The Look-back workflow — four steps.
The 6 prompts
One or two sentences. Just the surprise, not the full analysis yet.
"My 'observations' about my partner were almost all interpretations. I wrote 'they're frustrated by the workflow' as observation — but I never saw frustration, I inferred it from one sentence."
Names a specific item from the document and the gap between what it claimed and what it was.
"I'm surprised how much I've grown since then."
Doesn't engage with what you wrote — talks about the distance from it. The look-back is about the document.
Not what the prompt said. Name the actual capability the assignment was building.
"It was teaching me to feel the difference between 'I saw this happen' and 'I think this is happening.' That's a capability I need every time I talk to a stakeholder — and it's the capability AI can't supply, because AI doesn't know which thing is which in my notes."
Names a specific cognitive move and connects it to a real downstream use.
"It was about understanding the partner's needs better."
That's the surface task. The capability underneath was distinguishing observation from interpretation — a different thing.
Be specific to your situation. What would you have had to do, think, or face for this assignment to actually work on you?
"I'd have had to go back to my interview notes and mark every single claim as observed or interpreted. The honest answer is most of my claims were interpretations dressed as observations. I avoided that pass because I knew it would invalidate half my next-step thinking."
Names a specific procedure that didn't happen and an honest reason it didn't.
"I should have been more careful about my assumptions."
Generic improvement language. "More careful" doesn't tell anyone what the careful version would have looked like.
What would the wrong way to approach the Audit have been, and did you do it that way?
"The wrong way was to write a list that looked careful but treated my interpretations as facts. I did it that way. I can tell because every assumption I 'audited' is the kind of thing I'd already decided was true — I was confirming, not auditing."
Names the failure mode, names that they took it, points at evidence in the document.
"The wrong way would be to skip the assignment."
Identifies a way of failing that wasn't actually available — you did the assignment.
If you wrote the Audit honestly, what did it set up in you for Sprint 3? If you didn't, what did the workaround cost you when MDRO came along?
Look across the Audit and the rest of your Sprint 2 work. Write one honest sentence about your actual habit when you're documenting evidence.
Check-in with Prof. Sathya in class to get credit for this submission. Your work is reviewed and credited on the spot.
Submit as PDF only — Canvas will reject other file types.
How: Write in your Sprint 4 Look-backs Google Doc, then File → Download → PDF Document. Upload that PDF on the Canvas assignment page — nothing else.
Reminder: Each look-back you do gets appended to the same Look-back doc. Each PDF you submit contains everything you've written so far.
Submit on Canvas →