I, my brother, and Maia were at constant odds at the beginning. We were all too headstrong to back down from an argument, so compromisation was rarely on the table, especially when one of us was attempting to interfere with each other’s designated tasks. The problem was that each of us had a vision of what SercaCase should and would become, and these ideas rarely converged. For example, my brother disliked my website and thought it colorless. I thought that his idea for a website, which was bright yellow and had a comically large menu, was childish.
At times, we would resort to petty shouting matches in which we devalued each other’s contributions to the project:
“All you’ve ever done is create a spreadsheet with some code in it!” one of us might shout.
“Well, all you’ve ever done is click on a few color options!” the response would come.
Then, we would storm off. Those few weeks were a time when not much got done because we couldn’t agree on anything, not even on who would do what. One day, we were discussing the idea of
After several explosive arguments, we learned to make our opinions heard in more constructive ways than incessantly insulting each other. We began to compromise on nearly everything.
I agreed to make the website yellow so that it’d look more inviting, and he promised not to interfere with the rest. A month and a half later, the website had been made blue to match the photos, and he had helped me pick out the layout for the home page. By putting our prides aside and accepting help, we made an amazing team. No amount of denigrating others’ significance to the project could ever make our own contributions bigger or better, but working together does.
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