Seventh Prompt - Teamwork Makes the Dream Work (19/09)

Final Reflective Essay - In Retrospect
This post was altered for the Final Reflective Essay. It was originally titled "[PROMPT 7] #32: Seventh Prompt - Teamwork Makes the Dream Work".

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"Reflecting on all of the different ways collaborative practice has been part of this studio—e.g. 

• collaborating with your editors;
• workshops and exercises in class;
• listening to each other's ideas and each other's ways of tackling things;
• reading and interacting with each other's blogs;
• the Unplagued collaborative essay process;
• collaborating with the ideas and theories of the guest speakers and the readers

—what have you noticed about collaboration? (what has shifted for you in how you understand and think about collaboration, its value and/or limitations and what makes it work or not work?)"

Ever since running into some unfortunate teams in high school that I've had to commandeer (and spend hours stressing over, proofreading everybody's work), I became embittered towards the idea of group work. Why should I worry about my (incompetent) team members' work that might be poorly sourced, plagiarised, or laden with punctuation, spelling, and grammar issues, when I could work on my own? Although I had exceptions for the few whom I respected, with friends getting an easy ticket into that VIP list, I generally opted to work alone. I rather I failed on my own efforts than thanks to someone free-loading or not doing things correctly. Thankfully, I noticed that in my later years, teachers were marking people individually, rather than as a whole.

Group and Collaborative work in university has been a much better experience. I haven't run into much difficulty, and, it's been way easier since the people I'm with are passionate about the course and subjects they're studying, thankfully. It's been a weird experience, not carrying the world on my shoulders. "Many hands make light work", a friend once told me, in the rare instance where I trusted my class with filling out a document with questions together, and it worked out semi-well. And I have experienced it more here.

I know this is just one aspect of the experience, but creating the Unplagued essay, and filling in all our parts, and then editing specific sections, it... it was relieving. And so very exciting. Seeing all the words flow onto the page from a variety of people. It would've been even cooler to see it happen in action, in class, but still. I trusted everyone wholeheartedly and in the end, I didn't have to go to sleep stressing (everyone just ignore that I left my suggested edits at like 12:30am that one night, I promise, it wasn't stress, I just hadn't done my part yet and wanted to!!), and I was so proud of the work we had achieved.

I... I want to do more of it. I think I'm convinced. I want to work collaboratively like that again, because it was so fun. I sincerely hope we get to do more of that in the future. Or at the very least, the silly writing game where we have a folded piece of paper and we have to pass it around to write a few words. That's a nice treat every once in a while.

Ah, the other parts, the other parts...

I feel like collaboration must be easier online? If we were all in the BSP room, we'd hear everybody talking in the same room and that might be a bit troublesome. I guess this is the one time where online communication is better! Having video on does help too.

Collaborating with others is like creating a strong support group. Checking in on other people's blogs, providing feedback on their pieces, and them doing the same to you... for much of our lives, especially those who recently graduated high school, writing can be quite a solitary experience. I remember how it felt, to wake up at 4am and conduct research on Vanguard cards to write stories before I attended school for the day. As a young writer, my readers were numbers. View counts. Review counts. The main interaction were PMs where people sent in requests for stories.

Man, how wack is that? To send in a request to someone. I mean, I've done asks on Tumblr, but, actually going up to a fledgling writer and saying, "Can you write a story where (so and so) happens?" for FREE and they say "Yep, on it!"

Not that young/new artists and writers shouldn't be taking requests to build a following, but still. Real interesting stuff.

Oh, what was I saying? Yes! Writing can be quite a solitary experience, and I feel that in this course, we've all gradually opened up to see, communicate and eventually collaborate with other writers. People are establishing Discord reading nights, or attending the school reading nights. People have writers' retreats. Collaboration has made writing more than just words on a page, but looking up to see other people there. It's reassuring and motivating.

Ah! Also, working online has definitely made me realise how troublesome it is to create collaborative mindmaps. There's something wrong about using sticky notes on a virtual whiteboard versus one in real life, or how my piddly laptop can crash a bit when I try to use it. It's made me appreciate how easy it is to pull out the butcher paper and a bunch of markers to have some fun. Maybe doodle a little too.

Collaborative work has solidified a message in my head - collaboration work only works when you also contribute. I think I've felt most guilty about this regarding the blogs... It's been really touching, hearing about people reading my essay drafts, but aaaa! I haven't been able to reciprocate because of all the work I have to do. I definitely hope to do some reading once I finish this subject, giving my classmates more of the attention they deserve. I said in an earlier blog prompt that I said I wanted to do a better job at this networking thing but I haven't been able to do this very well. Aargh.

I'm... sorta running out of things to say, so, I'll just finish off with this last sentiment.

Collaborative work doing the lockdown... has been a real mood-booster for me. I feel like I'm stuck back in Year 9, where I studied all alone every evening, and it felt like I was locked up. It was an incredibly difficult time, because I felt like I was always alone in my struggles. But being with my classmates in call has been so uplifting and I look forward to classes each week. I hope we can all eventually celebrate together in person when it's safe.

Anyway. That's it for me. See ya.

-Katie, the Plague Wanderer