Don't Repeat Yourself

You may have heard about the DRY principle in coding & software design. It says that by using function definitions and OOP concepts you can avoid repeating the code. But I'm not going to write about the DRY principle this way; I found it somewhere else in my life.

Last week I was a mentor in CSSS2019 which stands for Computer Science Summer School 2019. The school was aimed to gather high school students and show them some inspiring and insightful topics in CS. In the two weeks of the school, I facilitated the same group discussion six times, but to six different groups of students. I was one of the mentors of the probability workshop and we wanted to start the class with a group discussion about the meaning of probability. After the fourth class, I suddenly saw a pattern. The discussions in the first class of each day went far better than in the second class. So I tried to find the reason and here's what I found: When the first class went well, I just wanted to repeat them in the second class. So the examples were not original and didn't work, I didn't respond well to students and make them participate. And the most important thing I found is I forgot to love the students, not the topic. With the experience of the first class of the day and the good feedback I got, maybe my mind increased the value of the topic and caused me to forget loving the students. After seeing these facts, I think the two remaining classes went extremely better and I had a better feeling at the end of both classes.

This situation happens frequently, when we do something well once, we try to repeat that in the same way next time, but it doesn't work like that. For example, if once I felt sad and after going out with friends I felt better, the next time that I'm sad if I just try to repeat that and schedule a hangout it may not work. Because this time I missed the original goal of hangouts to see friends and I'm just using it to solve my problem.

I'm trying this myself, and hope you can too.