To myself,
For the past month I participated in the AI 20204 coaching study run by Moduyeon.
I was fortunate. I met sincere teammates from many different workplaces and stages of learning. Thanks to them, our team was selected as one of the outstanding teams. But a problem arose without anyone realizing it, including me and even the teammate who was most harmed by it.
Because of a blog post I uploaded too boldly, a serious issue occurred in the dissertation approval process of one teammate who worked as a designer by day and pursued graduate school by night, living exactly that kind of earnest double life. Even if a dispute had happened between team members, a leader would still bear responsibility. But in this case, the starting point was my own lack of sensitivity.
Here is the background.
I applied to participate as a leader in the coaching study run by Moduyeon, which I already knew about. Against my expectations, I was fortunately selected. My enthusiasm was high, and each teammate also participated sincerely. Other teams in the free board often wrote about their difficulties.
I wondered what I could do for my own team, and then I realized that none of them were using a personal GitHub or development blog. I thought perhaps I could at least contribute in that way, and that I should serve as a small example. So during the study I kept uploading progress and practice code to GitHub and sharing it with teammates. And in spare moments I also posted related material on my personal blog.
The problem was that on the morning of the 20th, after receiving an urgent message from a teammate, I learned much too late what had happened. I checked the message and deleted the related post, but by then the teammate had already been placed in a difficult physical and emotional situation that should never have fallen on them. It was a complete disaster. And the reason I am writing this explanation is not only because of the event itself. I am writing it this openly because I want to point directly at my own bias and my own poor cognitive sensitivity.
Looking back, it is deeply embarrassing, but at the time I had never experienced the process of writing and approving an academic paper, and I did not understand the situation at all. In truth, part of me even felt wronged. Because I had repeatedly emphasized GitHub and blogging, because I had not heard beforehand that distribution was prohibited, and because I had cited the writer and source while posting material that had already been excerpted and shared with me, I thought, what exactly is the problem? I treated it too lightly, as if deleting it would simply solve everything. Worse, I even became irritated with the university thesis system and the academic culture dependent on it. That is how pitiful I was.
Then, in my haste to overcome my guilt and calm my own anxiety as quickly as possible, I began sharing my own proposed solutions with that teammate and kept asking questions about how things were progressing. Eventually I came to understand the facts. But my behavior almost certainly reopened the wound rather than helping it. The result was more hurt, and that hurt belonged to the teammate, not to me.
Even while typing this, my hands shake.
Because I knew nothing and could only wait passively for the result, I became trapped by anxiety and turned into someone that cowardly. That cowardice led me to objectify a problem that had originated in someone else's inconvenience and disappointment because of me, and I ended up confronting that ugliness directly. Once I understood the situation, I could no longer overlook the whole sequence of events.
The teammate who was left only with hurt is probably, even now, still working through another thesis while also doing their main work as a designer, without a place to complain. It is always harder to recognize one's own fault than someone else's, but I felt I could not help but accuse myself. Bitterly and shamefully, I realized once again that I am still not an adult. Even feeling heavy-hearted seemed like a luxury.
There is about a week left before the dissertation approval result. Regardless of the outcome, the fault I came to recognize in myself, the cowardice of that sequence, and the labor and fatigue already imposed on my teammate all seemed like matters that deserved to be addressed as quickly as possible. Even if I cannot undo what already happened, I believed it was necessary to face the problem directly and make the mistake explicit. So I hurriedly sent a message to the operators of the Moduyeon coaching study about my shortcomings as a leader, my attitude, and my lack of cognitive sensitivity. I also contacted the person in charge to ask them to check their email. I wrote that not only completion, but even receiving an award for an excellent mission, would be inappropriate.
There is no falsehood in the record above.
To reflect on my past disgraceful behavior,
I leave this public written apology documenting the full course of events.
