Being Proactive is not Always Good

The polite word for me is "driven". I like to meet challenges head on and make ambitious goals for myself, and I bring that attitude to most everything I do. I'm not sure if it's always welcome when it comes to group work, but for the most part it means I stay on top of things and have a leg up early on. It can also get me into a bit of occasional trouble—a side effect of all of this hard work is that I tend to jump to conclusions and into action early, too. 

 

For example, I learned last January (8 months before I would start classes) that each GD class has at least one class rep, so I immediately made it my goal to be that guy. I got some funny looks from the staff here on day one when I asked about it, but we had a vote a while later and you know the rest. Win!

We needed to form flash teams for Term 2, and we could have let them work themselves naturally, but the other GD23 class rep and I chose to build them ourselves right after hearing the news. When our instructors asked for a list of our programmers to form our teams around, we handed them a list of fully-formed teams instead. Win!

After working with my flash team and having had many experiences working with others, I've formed a lot of opinions about my fellow class members. So with pre-production on our final project (and future career prospects) just around the corner, I decided to form my final project team a little early. Just before Christmas holidays we announced to our class that four of us were working together, and another group of five also stepped forward. A third of our class was suddenly in teams. Can you guess the reaction from the rest of the class? Lose!

Some people were mad. Most people were surprised. Worst of all, some people were panicked, maybe feeling they were being left behind and feeling they also should form teams. None of this was intentional, of course, and we were aware that we might cause a panic, but the alternative was for us to lie for several months. Not really an alternative at all.

In speaking with various instructors about this, it seems like we did what we needed to, but on the other hand we've also been told that we should maybe have waited before jumping into teams, and that we could expect our current group composition to change. I don't believe that will happen—I wouldn't have shacked up with my team if I wasn't sure I could rely on them to build an excellent portfolio piece—but I *am* open to the possibility that we could have disagreements or other problems as we go along, and as a four-man team there could be room for one more of the right people.

But that's a group decision.

Anyway, realizing that I'm new to the game and being eager to soak up as much experience as possible, I'm taking every opportunity I can to challenge my assumptions about everyone in the class, which is the advice we were given by one of my favourite instructors. The short version of this post is that I'm aware of my limitations and negative tendencies and taking steps to mitigate them.

I'll post about our team soon. We're working on our group identity right now and I am excited to see what our artist is going to come up with for our splash page.

Thanks for stopping by.