My Biggest Breakthrough

For this blog post, I’ve chosen to discuss the following topic:

Discuss your biggest success during the course. What was your breakthrough, and why did it matter? What did you learn, about the technology, and also about yourself?

I believe my most significant success during this course stemmed from the experience of working in a four-person team. This team is officially the largest development group I have been a part of, as the development team I work with at my job consists of three members. The absence of predetermined leaders or hierarchy within our group presented an interesting social dynamic, as it was intriguing to see how we would self-manage, work together as a team to make decisions, handle conflicts, and hold each other accountable.

I like to think that my greatest achievement was naturally assuming a primary leadership role within my group. I proposed many of the decisions we ultimately adopted and was a key driver in team and project organization.

This experience was quite the breakthrough for me. Along with our entire team, I learned a great deal about the technology, specifically gaining in-depth user knowledge of how LLM AI can contribute to a development project and how to best utilize them as a contributor to the project. However, the most significant learning for me during this course was about myself.

I have always had doubts about my leadership abilities. Although I’ve had experiences where my “good” ideas were often chosen by groups, I saw myself as merely the “idea guy” and not someone who could take on a traditional leadership role. It was enlightening to discover that I am capable of stepping into a competent leadership position amongst my peers.

I thoroughly enjoyed this course, especially working with my team, and I am extremely grateful as I look forward to completing my Computer Science degree at Oregon State University.