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  Learning to Ask Questions I was in my final year of high school, and with the university entrance exams approaching, it was the most intense time of the school year. In chemistry class, we were studying “organic chemistry” for weeks, but unlike the rest of the class, I couldn’t understand a thing. Our teacher already had a fast-paced teaching style, and with such a complex topic, I quickly fell behind. I didn’t understand the diagrams or the different types of bonds she drew on the board, but I was too hesitant to ask questions. In a room where everyone seemed to be taking notes like they understood everything, I didn’t have the courage to say, “Could you explain this from the beginning?” So I sat in silence and decided to try learning from textbooks after class. That night, I searched the topic online and watched countless videos on YouTube. But since every source explained it in a completely different way, I ended up even more confused. I had no other choice left but to ask m...

  That Code Review Changed Me Last semester, in a Python course at my university, I had the opportunity to write code with a friend for the first time in my life as part of a project assigned by our professor. We followed the commonly preferred method: while my friend wrote the code, I reviewed it and tried to give it meaning. It was quite clear that he was more skilled at coding than I was. This way, I got to take part in a serious code review process for the first time. While he was writing, I had to stop and warn him multiple times. Technically, there wasn’t much wrong with his code aside from the occasional comma or parenthesis issue, but I had difficulty understanding what some blocks of code were doing. He often used vague variable names, and to keep things short, he chose complicated techniques that we hadn’t even covered in class yet. I kept pointing these things out whenever I didn’t understand something, but after a while, I sensed that his enthusiasm was fading. Before...

  When the Medium Changes the Message About three years ago, during high school, something happened that helped me truly understand Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase:  “The medium is the message.”  We were working on a group project. Well, not a traditional project—it was more like a spontaneous decision to make a short film based on a classmate’s idea. Because of the story we chose, we needed a large cast, so more than half the class was involved. Our group leader assigned each person a character and a basic storyline, but we were all supposed to write our own scenes. In our first attempt, we managed to shoot the first scene perfectly. But after that, including me, many of us struggled with writing. Since our group leader was really good at screenwriting, we texted him this message: “Hey man, we think you should write the scripts too. You’re great at this and you actually enjoy doing it. What do you say?” Our intention wasn’t to dump the work on him—we just wanted the pro...