Have Hard Conversations

This was frustrating; it was the halfway point on the semester and week two of our web development group project, and one of my teammates still didn't know how to start the server which is the most basic thing you have to learn before beginning to build anything else. College is such a joke.

Two other teammates were assisting this guy while I was thinking about what to do him. It was time for a hard conversation, but mustering up the courage to have them is never easy. Time to be a man.

"Alright everyone, let's pause a second.", I said, taking a seat with everyone. With sincere seriousness, care, and some sternness, I looked directly at him. "Look man, I've gotta be upfront with you because I want to help you. I don't even know what work I can assign to you because you clearly don't even know the very very basics of this framework."

He wasn't crying or trying to fight me yet, so this was going better than expected. "I'm going to make you responsible for the Google login feature, and I don't think you can do it. I really don't; however, this feature won't affect the development of anyone else, so you won't have to worry about slowing the team down. If you don't know where to start, I'll send you some really great videos to watch that should get you up to speed."

In academia, it has been my experience that nobody has the guts to say things like this. During that moment, I wasn't sure how this was received.

Fast forwarding, each week I'd check on him and ask if he needed anything. He never did and always had some progress to show me. And ya know what, he finished this feature with plenty of time to spare. I gained a lot of respect for him.

Yesterday was the last day of the project, and we were in the computer lab after everyone else had left. As he was leaving, he started to speak but caught himself. I listened as he was semi-stuttering and searching for words, "Thank you. You are a great leader, super smart, and inspiring. I want to be like you one day." That was probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

Have hard conversations.

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"You assume that there is a flip-side to your painful envy of Michael Chang[professional tennis player]: namely Michael Chang's enjoyable feeling of being-envied-by-LaMont-Chu. [...] To be envied, admired, is not a feeling." – DFW

I think there are both healthy/unhealthy relationships to envy/admiration. But I'm not so sure that the enjoyable being-envied-by-LaMont-Chu feeling does not exist.