Group Project

So I'm currently at the tail end of working on a group project and it has been tough. We are competing in a development competition in Minneapolis with 4 other colleges. Basically the committee running the competition gives us a piece of land in our case an 18 acres site in one of the Minneapolis suburbs and we are supposed to come up with a development proposal for the site.

Well this started in early February and we have meet at least once a week since. I was involved in this same competition last year and it was completely different. First of all I think last years project was significantly easier. We had the opportunity to choose to one, two, or all three parcels and come up with a development plan for each. We chose to only do one and we only had one building on it. This year we are proposing at least 6 and we have to come up with a construction schedule and costs for each and then a financial pro-forma and other financial information. Anyways last year we also had six guys working on it and we were all pretty committed and we all had no idea what we were doing. We ended up doing pretty good, we got third but we think we got hosed ;).

So this year has just been completely different we have had 13 people involved and I have been put in a position of "leading" this group and it is like people wait for me to give them things to do and it is very frustrating. Also I would say there are like 2-3 of the people in the group who have actually put a significant amount of time into this project and the rest have put very little. The experience has definitely taught me a lot about group work. Being in a position to delegate is a tough position to be in. Its like you have to understand where the whole project is going and how to explain each part to each person. It is ridiculous how delegation seems like something that is so easy, I mean you just tell other people what to do right? It has been quite the journey and it has been very stressful. I can not wait for the project to be over. We have until Wednesday afternoon to get it finished and we have some major things to get worked out before then.

I have just been very stressed out with this project and am nervous about us getting it finished, So I thought that blogging about it might help a little.

Well hopefully we can make this thing fly in a few days :). I only have like forty more days till graduation, that is a solid positive to think about!

War

I'm pretty pessimistic. It is one of my many flaws I wish I was more easy going or just plain optimistic. But I tend to lean towards pessimism. I think most people struggle with perspective and I have been thinking about perspective a lot lately. Perspective is something that is difficult to maintain. I think it is because culturally "perspective" is where you land on the american dream or how you measure up to your peers in terms of success.

I'm reading Fly Boys by James Bradley which is about some airmen who fought in the pacific and became P.O.W.s in Japan during world war two. Most of the book as actually very appalling. War is something I can't even pretend to understand and I think is far to often read about in a way that isn't really attempting to understand it. It seems to me that far to often people read a line like "one hundred thousand american military, two and a half million Japanese and thirty million Chinese were killed in Japan's raid of China and the fighting in the pacific during world war two" and then continue to read on without being fazed. 30 MILLION PEOPLE!!!!! James Bradley has a chapter of his book devoted to Japans "rape" of China and it is horrific. The Japanese just killed everyone in sight when they attacked China. It isn't even the reading about "civilized" war that has been the tough parts to read but it is the sections that talk about different armies decimating civilians and the way that life was view by the different nations. I guess I have had such a sheltered life that it is hard for me to comprehend how the world hasn't stood together for peace. It is incomprehensible to me that nations have been brainwashed to believe that they are so damn different then each other and that other nations youth "deserve" to die. I apologize to anyone who reads this for my ramblings I'm trying to process as I type.

While I wrestle with the insanity of racism, ignorance, and inhumane violence of the world wars of history this book has helped me to adjust my perspective of my life and to be grateful for the environment I have been raised in and the opportunities I have had. If it was the early 1940's I would almost certainly be a soldier in the war or be dead. It is refreshing to take a step back from the mentality of looking at what you haven't achieved and what you don't have to be grateful for what you do have.

I'm not "officially" (Whatever that means ;) Participating in lent but I have been around some people that are and I have just decided for that for this season of lent/life I am trying to give up being ungrateful? I would've just said try to be more grateful but I'm pretty sure you are supposed to stop doing something for lent. This has been a very good thing for me to be challenged with during this season because I am in a season of uncertainty and stress. I feel as if I am on the brink of making some heavy decisions like what to do, where to live, what to devote time time and what things I'm trying to achieve in the next fews years.