The Project
I have never worked this way before. I have done projects, I have done group projects, but never full time and never of this scale. I enjoyed it for the most part. I enjoyed working with my team. I enjoyed engaging with the teachers in feedback sessions, even though I didn’t always agree with their feedback, but that’s just the stubborn ass that I am sometimes. I also enjoyed the nature of the work most of the times and I am happy with our finished product. In the end I wish we would have started to power work earlier on. This might be a trap everyone falls into, and it might be the fact that we are still students, but we could’ve saved ourselves a lot of stress. So if I look back at this project and would change something, it would be that.
My Own Learning Experience
I learned a lot this project. Not just about the learning goals I set out to do. But about myself and working in a team. Mostly a team with people I don’t know that well and with very different cultural backgrounds. I have experience with guiding a big group of people to and end product. I used to lead a cabaret group/show for 3 years. However this experience was very different. I learned a lot about myself as a team player as well as a ‘leader’ even though I was not really a leader but a scrum master. I did try to take my role seriously and tried to guide and manage our group wherever I could. In the end we got it done, and I like to believe that my involvement as scrum master had something to do with it. I hope I did a good job, but that is not just for me to decide.
I set out to learn more about storytelling, design and concepting. Unfortunately, even though I did a lot of it this project, I didn’t learn much new about design and storytelling (apart from some more experience with drawing, poster and web design). I did learn a lot about concepting however. I learned to kill my darlings and make compromises. Neither have I engaged in sponsorship deals with store owners before, which was a very new and interesting experience for me. This project has been good for my personal development and skills, and of that I am glad.
My Team
I really like my team. Never before have I worked with a team of such diversity. It was difficult at times, but mostly very interesting and invigorating. Of course there were the usual tensions and annoyances sometimes. But you cannot get rid of that in a full time project with students of different character. We had some communication issues and got distracted a lot in the beginning. This was not good for productivity, but very good for team building. We also went out to get a drink or something to eat with multiple group members sometimes, which was nice. Once we noticed our frequent distractions and joking around was getting in the way of our project, we adjusted. With help of the teachers and some good planning we made it work in the end. Every now and again I got annoyed, I had to get annoyed with some people and people with me to get something done. Not everyone was a good communicator or team player at all times, but we always found a way to get around that eventually. The most satisfying thing about this team, and the experiences I’ve had with them over the couple of weeks, is that when I look back at the blog posts and all the pictures I get a smile on my face. And that for me says it all. I enjoyed working with this team, and on the project. We are and forever will be: Team Girlpower.
Project Fat 