The person cried in my office. I felt awful. A previous post was about this person’s work. Over the past few months I have talked, taught, suggested, and cajoled this individual to see the light, but it has been hard. Although I felt I have been very very patient, it wasn’t enough.
What’s the problem? This person just doesn’t have the experience. This person just needs to do the work again, and again, and again. This person needs to struggle to figure out how to express things in the simplest and most straight-forward, obvious way. This person needs to fix problems while realizing why they occurred in the first place and how to never have them happen again. Just too intense to do in such a short time.
What did I do wrong? A lot. I was too vocal. I said too much, too often. I should have just kept my mouth shut more. The person said they felt worthless. How sad. Previously I tried to work through this person when changes needed to be done. I discussed each change and why they were needed. Then I let the person do the changes. This was both exhausting and frustrating. However, recently and mistakenly I decided to make some changes myself. This was the final straw, and the individual gave up, and said that the work was now mine.
hmm, yeah tough situation.
reminds me of a time back in sixth grade when i wrote some sort of story we had to write every week and mom took it and marked it up to the point that there was more red than black on the page. it was like taking a knife to my heart. i’m pretty sure i cried too.
but it was a good lesson to learn. i started methodically revising what i wrote and i probably never gave what i wrote (in any raw form at least) to mom to critique. hehe.
Comment by Justin — July 16, 2004 @ 10:17 pm
Amazing because I have the same recollection of my mother red marking up something I wrote. Yet all she was doing was trying to help. Hmmmm, I’ve remembered that almost 50 years later.
Comment by Bri — July 17, 2004 @ 12:06 pm