Facebook, the little corner of the internet that I am somewhat heavily addicted to, it never used to be like that you know? There was a time where I was solely a Bebo girl, and I spent a little bit of my time on there, talking to friends, uploading photos and being a volunteer peer support for a group about Self Injury Awareness. Then I started working at GPK, and the pressure was put on to me by a manager to join Facebook as they were all on it. I did just that, and I SWORE I would not get addicted, I was use to Bebo and wouldn’t change any part of my social networking relationship with it to make room for this new interest I was flirting around with. However as time went by the affair just got over the top to the point I separated from Bebo, but didn’t end my relationship, and soon enough become so involved with Facebook. I live on the darn site now...!! And I also vividly express myself ALOT on it, right up to speaking my mind so openly in my status updates – with that comes an attitude of if you don’t like it, don’t read it, if you don’t like what I talk about, then go find the friend button and remove me I couldn’t care any less. It is MY page and I will do with it as I please!
I did just that regarding my first week coming up with the return to University, and the fact that my first assignment was due in the FIRST WEEK!! You have got to be kidding me here I kept thinking, haven’t even started the class, how is it even possible to do an assignment in such a short time, when I will not have learnt anything at all about the subject, and it really began to stress me out, not fully but there was some stress there for sure.
I think the second worrying part that came with this assignment and stress was the fact it was a GROUP assignment, and in the past two years me and Group assignment never EVER work out, with the exception of my group I had for Kitchen Operations and sort of my group for Accommodation Management. I usually get landed with the position of being the group leader or I get stuck with what I feel like are just complete morons who just don’t gel with me. Every single Group Assignment I have had to do for my Diploma in Hospitality Management has fallen apart, and has not worked out, and usually it’s right at the last minute before it is due, and I then face ultimate stress and surprise with that stress as to what work I can bust out last minute the day before it is due.
Sitting in class the other day and having Lexie Matheson talk about a student who came and talked to her about group work and problems she had, she went on to say to this student; “Did you ever stop to think maybe it is you that is the problem?” The classic blame someone else game. It was after listening to this story I realized how true it was, and that is just what I do. Last year was when it was put to me by Christine Hall, a lecturer who I trust and get on very well with and Daphne Fleet, the Head of Hospitality and Tourism School, that perhaps it wasn’t my fellow peers who were so much the problem, but myself. I thought at the time that cannot be! How could I possibly be the problem, when I have all these difficulties with the members of my team? I work perfectly fine as part of a team while at work, though I do enjoy being on my own, but I am able to work somewhat well as a team. No, it can’t be true....!!
They informed that because of my level of experience and from who I have worked for in the Hospitality Industry, I have developed high level of expectations, and therefore I have taken on these traits of my former bosses and have brought them into University life. I left the meeting feeling rather upset, somewhat in denial, it is sort of like when someone dies, in example when I lost my son three years ago, I sat in denial that he had actually died, and I spent a good 9 months thinking he was still alive inside me, and I refused to believe what I had been told, until the big due date when I had my smear done and my doctor confirmed I was not pregnant.
The more I thought about what Christine and Daphne had said I could see that they were in fact right, I am in a position where I know a lot more than what other students do, I have a longer work history to some students, most of them are either in their first year of University and have never worked ever in Hospitality, or they are only on their first job....and in some cases some students aren’t even working in the industry at that but are studying it. My skills and knowledge for this industry are at a high level, and I have in conjunction with my work experience prior qualifications from other institutes, thus putting me at a level where I am sort of like the boss or supervisor and my peers in my group are just the newly hired employees and I expect a hell of a lot from them to soon.
I go into these group assignments usually with my own ideas, and I don’t always allow others to openly express themselves and what they have to say. As I look back on the past two years in particular I have been able to see that when there is difficulty in my groups I shut down and I go silent and I begin to slowly walk away, and I leave it right to the last minute when the shit pretty much is travelling at full speed towards the fan to bring it to my lecturers knowledge that something isn’t going right. As a result failing a paper taught me that I need to voice myself in the early stages of the problems arising, in order to reduce or in actual fact eliminate such problems happening. So when I saw that another group assignment was install for me for this semester all hell broke loss for me, and come the very first class I felt a little uneasy, as it seemed that I knew no one at all in the class apart from one person, and it appeared to me that everyone seemed to be at a higher level and in a different program to me, and that was where I started to worry a bit about this group assignment.
With this worry, I had one student in the class who at first point of view, I instantly knew was going to be my competition in this class, and for me I found that a major threat. However as the week progressed I was happy to see this girl in my tutorial group, and even more happier that we got put into the same group for this assignment, I was for some reason saying a secret little prayer, something told me about this person that they would bring me some good, and that competition is fair as well as healthy even to the most competitive person like myself. This student was Toni Buswell, and I was soon to find out that we were going to work together well in this group.
Upon being given our brief for our group assignment, to redesign The Hub Café at AUT in an aim to attract more business back to it, my brain started ticking over with what I envisioned what the “new” Hub Café would look like in my head; it was just a process of expressing my views out to my group, listening to the ideas of everyone else in the group and figuring out how the pieces of this big puzzle would all fit together to create the over all vision we wanted to achieve. After so many group assignments falling to pieces over the past two years, I was determined to make this one work, but at the same time I was feeling rather shy and scared of putting my ideas out, and I started to feel this little person in my head telling me that “we” being me, myself and I only, could not accept the ideas of someone else in the team, I had instantly made a judgment on a group member, but the more I think of it, there will always be that ONE person that you just don’t like at all in your group and it is that person you must suck your pride up and put up with and get the job done. At the end of the day once all the work is completed and the project has finished and been signed off you probably more than likely wont have to see them every again – that is unless you permanently work with them in an establishment, that is where you have to find that door, put your baggage down, throw on your make up and costume and go out onto the stage and act the scene out, when the curtains close and its all over you take that all off and walk back out that door with your baggage.
We talked about things that we wanted in the Hub, Kate wanted to put in a new floor into the Hub, and put in glass windows to shut it all in and make it a big gaming lounge, I however wasn’t keen on this idea, I could partly visualize the new floor, but I saw it differently, with barriers that were more open than having it all shut in as a little room, and I expressed this in my Facebook status when I got home, the more I thought about it, I started to think of the construction side of it and how it would work and began to think this idea just isn’t going to work at all in this time and place. We spoke about changing the décor, such as furniture and flooring, and putting colour on the walls along with blinds and shades. Vysakh believed that no one liked dark colours; however I debated this saying that Four Seasons Restaurant and Piko Restaurant had both been refurbished and redesigned in the past year, with Four Seasons having dark colours and the concept working well in there. We agreed that putting in a feature wall would work well, and to pull the colour swatches out of the Hub Logo. Kate suggested we put in linoleum through the whole café, because she didn’t like having carpet in eating areas, however I raised the awareness that in the wet weather this could prove to be a health and safety issue where the floor could become slippery from foot traffic, my prime example being Britomart Train Station, that gets really wet and slippery on the tiles when it has been raining, instead I suggested that what was currently there should be moved around, that the carpet be placed under where the sofas currently sat, and the wooden flooring that was there be swapped to where the carpeted eating area is.
I think the main thing I learnt from this first meeting was listening to ideas and taking them into consideration and then thinking logically about the pros and cons to these things, how they would join together and wither they would or wouldn’t work. This was followed by a second lesson when it came to dividing the work load and putting the power point presentation together. Toni came up with a creative concept of incorporating an old nursery rhyme of “Old Mother Hubbard” and basing our presentation deliver on this nursery rhyme, because of the café being called The Hub, this was part of the inspiration behind the designing of our presentation. I felt it was creative and expressed our ability to be more creative instead of being focused on plain, simple and formal. However, Kate was not fully keen on this idea, but when we explained how it would relate to making us look different and showing the creative side to Event Design, we managed to get her join in with what we were doing - very reluctantly so it seemed.
I felt that I wasn’t putting in enough input in terms of the work load with preparing the presentation slides, Kate started the slides, and we agreed to put photos of our team onto the slide with our names, though I had come to the meeting with my camera Kate wasn’t keen on the idea of us having out photos taken, she thought it would be more appropriate to take out photos from off Facebook and put them onto the slide, this for me what a bit of an issue, as it just looked out of place in the slide show. However I was not in the mood to express my feelings on this matter. I had a copy of what had been done saved to my flash drive, and with the deadline approaching fast and no communication from Kate as to what further work she had done on the slides since I left our last meeting, I decided to take control in terms of designing the background of the slides, I wanted it to have a rustic aged feel to them, as we were running with the “Old Mother Hubbard” theme and to me the nursery rhyme gives me that peeling wall paper feel with floral patterns, so I added a pattern to the slide, and with the image that was taken from off the internet, I took this into Photoshop and edited it by removing the white background around it, this brought difficulty the next day from Kate when she saw the new background design. Though I had kept her image she had found of a cupboard, her attitude from her spoke to me as if she was not happy with the wallpaper effect background.
From my side of things I didn’t have a full direct dealing with the remaining two members of our team; Vysakh and Nicole. However over all we did work very well as a group and I felt rather satisfied that I did a somewhat good job at listening to everyone’s ideas and opinions that they put forward, not only this but I learnt that not everyone is a moron, I think maybe the moron may even be MYSELF half the time. With this I also learnt that there are some decent people out there and I CAN successfully work in a group without the shit hitting the fan. At the end of the day, the big lesson to be learnt apart from being open and understanding , is COMMUNICATION. This is the key to success in co-coordinating projects. I now look forward to the next group assignment.
Here is to some more POSITIVE Facebook Status’ in the near future!
