#teamprojects

It’s 3:55 PM and the problem I lost sleep over is finally solved. 

*name has been changed

In class, my team finally chose a country to expand in. We chose the UK.

And we met our new team member. 

When we sat with our groups, we asked who had an idea for the country. They all said they didn’t know because they didn’t do research.

WHAT A SURPRISE THERE!!!!

The new girl (I’ll call her Claudia) said she just did research right in the classroom and said Netflix was everywhere except North Korea, China, Syria, and Crimea. I already knew this because I did research yesterday. But what shocked me was how proudly she said it. 

She could’ve said Netflix isn’t available in these countries, but this country seems to have potential. But no, she was like, “ok, well there’s no competition here so these seem like good ideas”. WTF?

Setting up in Hulu in North Korea or Syria? Does Claudia even know watch the news? Syria is very unstable and North Korea has only recently tried to be friendly with the world. If she was watching the news, she could’ve immediately said NK was not a good idea even though Netflix does not have operations there. 

The most obvious choice would be China, but since I did quality research instead of a brief 10 second search on Google, I was the only one on my team who already know of Hulu’s plans with China. Although, Hulu states to only be available in the US and Japan, they are hiring in Beijing. Hulu hasn’t officially released their plans for China, but since they’re hiring there, I assume Hulu is planning to operate there.

But Claudia insisted we choose China because of Hulu’s statement. The fuck? We’re supposed to choose a country that our company hasn’t expanded in yet and we’re supposed to be realistic with this project. We don’’t know what exactly is Hulu doing in China, but it would be best to select a country.that Hulu doesn’t have operations in to avoid complicating our research while Hulu’s operation are ongoing. 

Seriously? This is a senior level class and she thinks she can write a report on flimsy research. In academia, they teach us how to write research papers and do the research for them. We’ve been doing this since public school and through college. We should be decent at this! But based on my experiences with other teams, my other classmates still don’t know how to do research well. In this case, I had to say Hulu is already doing something in China because no one else spoke up. I wasn’t going to allow some uncertain claim direct us when I did actual research.So, eventually, Claudia backed down. 

I like how the rest of my team just sat there in silence watching us discuss. Of course they were quiet because they didn’t know what to say because they didn’t do research. Teams I work in always want to be coddled. If it’s a semester long project with no deadlines for smaller parts during the semester, then they’ll procrastinate until.the professor reminds them to work on it. Do they realize, in college, professors don’t chase after students to do their homework? That’s high school. 

Anyway, another girl who annoys me in the team is Bertha*. I thought I could trust her, but so far she has shown me that she likes to pretend she’s going to assist, but she won’t. And she likes to pretend like she knows whats shes doing, but she really doesn’t know. 

ORIGINALLY, I WAS GOING TO GIVE ALL OF THEM THE HIGHEST SCORES ON THE TEAM EVALUATION SHEET, BUT RIGHT NOW, ITS PENDING. BUT I DO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT KIND OF COMMENTS I’M GOING TO WRITE BECAUSE I AM GOING TO MAKE SURE EACH OF THEM GETS THE GRADE THEY DESERVE. 

First post of my 2nd blog. Let’s go.

It’s 9:12 PM and I just finished typing up my last post on my first blog. 

I wasn’t supposed to buy food after school today, but I did anyway. I ate before I arrived at school and after doing research at my school’s library, I felt like I deserved a drink so I drove to a local bakery and bought an iced black tea. It wasn’t as good as milk tea, but better than most drinks I’ve tried this year. And because of a YT video I watched earlier today,I decided to see how much food I could buy for $10. My tea and mooncake cost me a little over five dollars and my other purchase at a Japanese grocery store cost me almost six dollars.

I went over budget, but the quality of the food justified the price. Japanese food is still my least favorite type of food, but the drinks and the rice balls to me are products of the best value. Btw, the Japanese grocery store closest to me that I thought sold a certain alcohol does not sell it. Oh well. Although this grocery store is my second favorite,I found products that meet my expectations: rice balls and calorie free yogurt drinks. 

In the past, I realized shopping for food and eating it feels better when classes are done for that week, but I felt like I deserved it because the research I did for my team project after class took a lot of effort which brings me to my main rant of tonight.

MY TEAM DOES NOT CARE ABOUT OUR TEAM PROJECT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once again, I am taking initiative for my team by doing the research to get us started on the project. First, I brought up the idea for the company to study. They agreed on it, but we still needed to select a country to expand the company in. I brought up one idea, but I said we still needed to do research. That was last Wednesday. With Labor Day, we had a long four day weekend off from school and within that time, the only thing we accomplished was getting our original team back together and adding one more member. Tomorrow is an appropriate time to finalize our choices for the company and country to study, but it seems I’m the only one who is researching for this. Part of me wanted to assume they were going to text me an idea or tell me tomorrow, but from past experiences, I think they’re assuming I’ll handle it without their assistance. BUT COME ON!!!!!!!!!

THERE ARE SIX OF US ON THE TEAM AND NOT ONE OF THEM IS GOING TO HELP ME OR ,AT THE VERY LEAST, ASK ME IF I NEED ASSISTANCE? IN THEIR SPARE TIME, ARE THEY ALL THINKING “I DONT NEED TO WORK ON OUR PROJECT BECAUSE I’M SURE SOMEONE ELSE ON THE TEAM IS AND THAT PERSON IS GOING TO GET US AN A” ?. 

I mean, before the semester started, I said I would be fine working on the team project like it was my own project and wouldn’t mind if the other teammates didn’t assist me or take initiative. BUT, there was a girl on my team who gave me hope and who I thought would take on leadership if I wasn’t being the leader, BUT, she has not done that. At this point, it looks like my team relies on me to come up with the ideas and divide up the labor.

Sidenote: This expectation of teammates taking initiative or leadership roles came from studying management during my first semester at the school. One type of management strategy was that there was no definite leader in a team; the expectation was that anyone in the team would step up and lead to avoid any hierarchy because of resentment towards the leader or boss. I always give way for anyone to become leader because I’ve been in teams where one person asserted themselves as leader and we had operated smoothly with focus.  BUT, for the most part, I’ve had to get the ball rolling. 

Ugh, research is kind of a nightmare because I want to get this right. If we don’t chose the right country, then we’re going to be struggling through out the semester. 

I have to go back to researching. It’s 11 pm now.

Last note: I realized as I watched one of Elliot’s videos that he directed, filmed, and edited in the past...If he was interested in me, why didn’t he bother selling himself? Why didn’t he bother telling me what he does in his spare time or what he’s good at? Or maybe he doesn’t want to talk about that because he doesn’t do that anymore? Or maybe because he was drunk and didn't know what to say?

This semester we’ve been doing team projects. As such, I now have two side blogs each dedicated to the individual team project.  For the first half of the semester, I was paired with Maria Rutherford and we took on the visual brand identity refresh of the NGO Auckland City Mission. The tumblr (cm-acm.tumblr.com) outlines the overall process and reflection during this project.

Re-designed logo for the Auckland City Mission by Cassie and Maria

For the upcoming second half of the semester, I’ve now been paired with Chelsea Strickland. Together we’ve been assigned to continue with the touchpoints and brand extensions for the NGO UpsideDowns, which Anna Massey and Nathan Clark did the brand identity refresh for in the first term. This tumblr (upsidedowns-cc.tumblr.com/) will follow the process of this project.