I decided to write this week on chapter two, about “Unleash Your Enthusiasm”. I was reading this and got very interested because it is something that has been an issue for me for a very long time. The excitement that we have when having ideas and want to share them with others is huge, but then we feel like we might do too much or that it’s not good enough and end up not sharing it at all.

I have found myself holding back many times from sharing ideas, my thoughts. In this case, it goes both ways: when I find myself holding back because I have more enthusiasm than my colleagues do, but also when their ideas sound great and better than mine and I step back because I feel like they’re doing better than I am. But reading this pattern made me understand that there are never bad ideas in computer science. All ideas are good, we just better them, but there are no bad or nonintelligent ideas.

As software developers, we have to understand that there is no way we will be working on our own. The fact is we will be working as teams, we will have to share our thoughts, ideas and work all together as a group. So, feeling that we want to share whatever we have, we have to go for it because we can always bring something unique in our teams, some unique attributes to our groups as well as our enthusiasm.

That is why it is important to have a team that is all excited and enthusiastic because when the morale is low, or teams are not welcoming the newcomers, we will definitely feel uncomfortable and would not like to share our enthusiasm. One thing I understood is bringing our ideas and passions will add intelligence and diversity to the team.

Being in a team with people of different levels of experience is very important because they can always help others improve and get better. But also, those who have a low level of experience compared to others in the tram, should not feel intimidated. It might be hard, but we should feel free to share and be open-minded to learn and become better at what we do.

Also, it is very important to have that person in the team who makes us feel comfortable and is willing to help. They will help us get along with the team and feel more comfortable talking. I did it in my software development capstone; I knew some people in the team, and others I just met them. In the beginning, it was hard but then, I decided to open up to the one I knew before and he made me feel comfortable. After feeling comfortable sharing with him, he helped me feel comfortable sharing with the team too because he thought my ideas were awesome and encouraged me.

Never keep our ideas and enthusiasm for ourselves because we might lose the opportunity to bring something great and unique to our team, make a difference, and also learn from the experience.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Gracia's Blog (Computer Science Major) by gkitenge and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.