c5-feedback

I'll be as honest as possible to start this off. The whole idea of pairing and giving feedback made me cringe when I first started my learning adventure with Dev Bootcamp. I have always preferred to work alone, with the thought that peer influence on my work would serve only to stifle my creativity and efficiency. As for feedback, I was naive enough to think that the only feedback I could make use of was from someone in a teaching position and not from someone who was learning alongside me.

I stand corrected.

At the start of Phase 0 I have to say that pairing with someone to solve a challenge made my palms sweat. I got nervous about showcasing not what I knew but reavealing what I didn't know. The thought of dragging someone down because of my (now lessening) ignorance of coding and my lack of experience was at the forefront of my mind. Yet, within the first few minutes of my first pairing, the negative thoughts and feelings of apprehension lessened as quickly as they grew. Those sessions in Week 1 really opened my eyes to the fact that we are all in the same boat, and the fact that if I didn't expose my weaknesses how would I ever turn them into strengths?

Working with someone else to get to a working solution on a challenge wasn't nearly as dificult as I has imagined it to be. I had foreseen a struggle between the different ideas of how to approach the problem and how to go about solving it. I had also foreseen the difficulty of getting an idea across to my pair so that we could be on the same page to actually work together. As it turned out, once again, I couldn't have been more wrong. Following the steps of doing a check-in and taking at least a few minutes to get to know each other on a personal level helped to dispell those thoughts. That check in process, then and now, has opened up a door to smooth communication that is so essential to working with someone else on anything. Sure there are always hiccups along the way, but without a clear avenue of expression, there's no way to get one's ideas across to get anything done. I think that each time I pair with someone on a challenge the easier it becomes, the more comfortable I get with the process and the more I enjoy it.

I've discovered that solving a challenge with a pair alleviates a lot of the stress and frustration that can arrise when I work alone. Having another brain working on the same problem and another set of eyes to look at that problem means that more often than not there's always going to be a plan B while working. It's too easy for me to get stuck on one train of thought and then get über frustrated and pissed off when my train of thought just can't seem to get down the damn tracks, much less arrive at the next station. The reward for me is having someone else along for the ride to tell me to switch tracks when things aren't working or to keep chugging along when we are actually running along smoothly. As long as the communication is open and clear and both sides of the pair are willing to let the other's ideas drive the work, I think that pairing on a challenge is a great benefit. On the other hand great frustration arrises from the pairing if there's not that sense of open communication or a willingness to set one's own ideas aside to follow what their pair thinks is better.

As open as the communication may be, there is always that silent and underlying beast of personal feelings. The pair may seem to be working well with each other and the work may be progressing in a positive manner, but there's still a chance that one side or the other isn't comfortable with something. Maybe one side feels that their pair is not allowing them to contribute. Maybe they feel disrespected or slighted and that their ideas are being cast aside. Maybe one side is working much faster than the other, and one side of the pair is watching concepts fly by without really grasping them. Most of the time, if the work is progressing well, but these other feelings exist, I think that most people would rather swallow these feelings in order to just get the work done and be able to walk away from the situation then to address them on the spot and cause a disruption in work flow. Being forced to give feedback, as well as receive it, allows us to express ourselves comfortably and ultimately improve how we work with each other.

I like to think about feedback as game film for an athlete. It allows one to see their performance from an honest outside perspective after the fact. I think that getting criticism in the moment, no matter how positive, is too disruptive to be of any use. It works a whole lot better to have one's mind free from working on a challenge to think about how each side worked on that challenge. I also find it easier to give the criticism after the fact. Giving feedback has been hard, I will have to admit. Sometimes I am so impressed with the person I worked with that I feel like I have to really stretch to come up with some constructive criticism. Sometimes I feel like I have too much to say and worry about turning the feedback into negative thing. I don't want the feedback I give to look like I am nit- picking, but without being specific about actions and emotions occurring in the pairing, what's the point of the feedback in the first place?

On one hand when I read the feedback that people gave me it made me feel really good. There were a lot of places where I thought I was struggling and my pairs thought I was doing well. It was as if I was looking at my game film and saw myself running fast where I thought I was barely walking. On the other hand, I read through the feedback, and wished that people had taken off the kid gloves before they wrote. To me the purpose of the feedback is not to be nice and blow smoke up each other's asses, but to be honest about how the actions, demeanor and communication of the other person affected one's work. I think that for the most part there's a fear that people have about hurting each other's feelings that impedes their ability to say something like, "Hey, what you did offended me so much that I couldn't be productive". As much as I want more constructive criticism about my weak points, I think that what I have received has helped me to see how my weaknesses can effect others and not just myself.

I'm walking away from the feedback with the idea that it is like a to-do list. A to-improve list if you will. I plan on reviewing the feedback before going into another pairing to try and ficus on the criticisms that people gave me in order to try not to repeat them again. As much as I cringed from the ideas of pairing and feedback in the beginning, I am really glad that we have this whole system. At this point I am finding that I want to pair more often than I do because I find it so helpful to learn from others as well as to teach others. I think that I learn a whole lot more working with someone else than I do by myself, because of the ability to bounce ideas off each other, the having a co-pilot when exploring concepts, and ultimately receiving the feedback on how my pair thought I performed. Although I don't necessarily believe that the feedback is affecting my learning of the material, it is helping me to learn how to better work with others and better understand how I work.