This week was a lot of doing things for others. I happened to get an assignment done ahead of time and was able to help two different groups of classmates with their assignments. It seemed like I more wanted to work on and help them with what they were doing but in doing so I remember that I love teaching people what I know and seeing the discovery on their faces. It is a weird feeling because sometimes you doubt yourself and wondering if what you are doing is enough. You can only do what you can and hope they are taking it in. Sometimes it makes me want to be a teacher, sometimes. The beautiful thing about it is now I really understand that material and feel like I could teach it and it all makes sense to me. Which is the point of learning anyway.
The other place is in my project group, I tend to be the one that is helping organize our group and taking extra work that is not really hard but just needs to be done. It has been challenging at times and more work than it needs to be. But it has made me learn more and understand more and grow more as a person and a CS student, software engineer, scrum master, leader, classmate, and teammate. Overall I feel like I have learned so much from non-development work in this project, and I just want to get out and use it, but alas still some school to do. I find that oftentimes I am the most confident in my soft skills because I have the most experience with them, but the more and more I learn in development the more I feel that with those soft skills I can learn and thrive in any environment.
Helping others is something that teaches us, helps us to grow, and stretches us. While helping us to think about people besides ourselves and we could all do with a little more of that.
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson