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# What role does empathy play in your life and how has it helped you?
> Empathy has always been a bit difficult for me to grasp, as I struggled with Asperger's Syndrome growing up. After a lot of intensive therapy I have learned how to take social cues, specific to emotions of others and how to empathize with them. It's greatly improved my understanding of others and struggles they might be facing, and has helped me understand that certain actions can be much more helpful if you can understand what someone is saying and not just listen to what they are saying.


# How does empathy help you build better software?
> Empathy for me is another way to help solve a problem. It's also a way to help connect to people, whether they are strangers, friends, or family. If you can connect with the people you are trying to help, you can discover their problems. Software is a great medium to help discover, map out, and solve many different types of problems that people have.


# Why is empathy important for working on a team?
> Empathy builds trust, understanding, and a sense of purpose for a team working towards the same goals, even if they might be
working on different parts of the same project. Empathy opens up communication and healthy criticism for improving themselves and others. Empathizing as a team not only improves the team, but the individuals, too! Without empathy, there may not be a sense of a team at all.



# Describe a situation in which your ability to empathize with a colleague or teammate was helpful.
> I worked as a lead teller for a bank and trust and teamwork were big parts of the job. One night as we were closing,
one of the tellers was in tears because as she was counting her drawer, she realized she was severely short on money compared to what the computer said she had. It was not her first time being short, so she knew if she could not find it, she would be fired. After consoling her and pulling up her record of transactions for the day, we found that she had deposited a very large cash sum into an account that should have been read as a check. This prompted a group discussion of slowing down and asking for help if feeling overwhelmed during the work day, and a new procedure of counting drawers right before going to lunch, which resulted in much fewer mistakes, much less time at the end of the day searching for errors, and the tellers as a group felt they were given the resources they needed to succeed.



# When do you find it most difficult to be empathetic in professional settings? How can you improve your skills when faced with these scenarios?
> Excuses are usually what I find difficult to be empathetic about. Excuses about why something did not get done or why something happened, to be specific. I usually do not like to listen to excuses and prefer to know the details of how it will be improved in the future if such an occurrence were to happen again. I can understand dire straits or emergencies, but to say you were late because of traffic, or could not finish a project because you are not feeling well makes me feel like you just didn't care to manage your time more efficiently. To improve on this I have practiced a lot of patience development and guidance counciling
and will continue these practices.