#MAYBE now I can actually handle the uni workload :D

[pennedinblood]

as of ten minutes ago we are officially Jobless™️. my sign to retire early and devote the remainder of my existence to writing toxic old man yaoi

[ib-bachelorette]

IB has come to an end...

 Hey guys! I started this blog in pre-IB to cope with the upcoming stress of the program, and now 3 years later I’m finally done with the program. After results day last Friday I can truly say that my journey with this program has ended, and luckily for me the ending has been sweeter than I could have imaged when I came out of my last chemistry exam a few weeks ago.

I got my diploma. I got the score I needed for my top choice uni. I am officially confirmed as a student at Cambridge university for the 2018-2019 year.

Honestly, this has been a dream come true. I had pushed myself through many nights and many heavy workloads with the thought that I was working towards Cambridge.

First I told myself that I was working to get the predicted grades I needed. When I had that I told myself I worked to get my interview. After that, I was working to ensure I was able to handle the interview that I luckily received. Then, despite what I would recall one of the worst interviews of my life (I had actually told my interviewer the mitochondria was the powerhouse of the cell, cheeky right?) I received my offer.

I was ecstatic, and then I was terrified. The offer was too high. There was no way I was going to reach that.

It felt like just as I had gotten my offer my IB world had fallen apart. I went from never getting anything below a 7 in chemistry to low 5s in my mocks. I went from thinking I had biology in the bag to getting my mock paper 2 back without a grade on it, because I had done so badly my teacher didn’t want to discourage me. When I took a paper 3 for my maths HL course 4 weeks before my first exam, I got a 4.

The journey was in no way sweet. I had somehow come so close to a dream and floundered at the very end. I cried a lot, wondering what had gone wrong and if all the grades I got last year were flukes.

However, I did the only thing I was ever taught to do. I put all thoughts of failure a the back of my mind. I forgot my expectations and pride, and I worked. It took the most discipline that I had ever used in my life, but I picked myself up from the ground and did everything in my power.

I took my exams not in the mindset that I got a 7, but in the mindset that I did the best I could. Honestly, I don’t think I could have put in more work if I tried. That thought was comforting.

In the end, results day surprised me. I received the offer that I was so sure was out of reach, and I now get to finally say that I will be a student at Cambridge University. I can say that I will study Natural Sciences at this university, a subject studied by some of my scientific heros like Peter D. Mitchell.

So am I saying all this just to show off? No. Okay, maybe I am a little bit, but I’m proud of myself and only human. 

But honestly, I’m saying this because we often don’t hear about the bad parts of the journey of IB. I don’t want my story to just be the beginning and the end, where I did well when I started IB and then I did well enough to go to Cambridge. That’s not how my story happened. In between that time I had been crushed into a million pieces. I had so many panic attacks at the thought of meeting my offer that I felt I couldn’t breathe. I felt so helpless looking at my results and now knowing why I had suddenly stopped doing as well as I had. 

IB is tough. There are going to be moments that you wish you had chosen a different path. Moments where nothing is going your way and you’re helpless to stop it. But all I can say is have faith. Have faith in yourself. Continue to work to the point that you have no regrets. Work so that once your grades come, you don’t think ‘what if I had studied more’ or ‘what if I put in more effort to do my IA.’ 

Continue working, even in the darkest of times. It may seem useless now, but it will make the ending that much more sweet.

P.S. If anyone is thinking about applying to Cambridge (especially as an IB /Natural Sciences applicant) my ask box is always open! I’ll try to help best I can, but I must disclose that I’m not even sure why I got accepted because boy do I have stories of how I messed up during every part of the application process.

[deceptivelytall-blog]

Richard Roach Reflective Statement

The last twelve weeks have given me insight into how to improve future group projects, through motivating my team better, taking responsibility for my actions as well as assigning responsibility, better communication, and a better framework for organizing individual work delegation.

From the outset, we knew the general direction our project wanted to take, that of a message focusing on environmental issues, and how it related to a city-wide context, but specific elements, such as aesthetics, mechanics, and even a proper name for our project eluded us.

The unfortunate side-effect of this large group was that the most available people doing most of the work (myself, AJ and Quentin), while the others needed to be constantly updated, as they were not in the ‘loop’ of development (as much of the developmental process occurred outside of uni, over Facebook messaging and Google Drive uploads).

----MOTIVATION----

Motivation was a factor considering that for all students in our group this project is part of a minor and thus efforts were more often than not concentrated elsewhere, meaning that there was little ‘left-over’ for this project.

I found that (with a few exceptions) most tasks I delegated either was not done or done to a low standard and that in both cases I or someone else would have to make up for the deficiency.

One example was during the semester break when I assigned everyone a small task to be completed over the 2 week period.

I had asked Beth, AJ, Daniel, and Angie to each produce a visual mood board, with examples of existing metro/public transport wayfinding, iconography, and text treatment, however, despite constant queries, only AJ managed to complete her mood board within a reasonable timeframe, Daniel and Angie didn’t even complete theirs.

Our group mostly communicated digitally, with 1 weekly meeting, on average, and so in the future, I may be able to use Sosik et al’s framework concerning digital group projects, and especially the leadership of these projects. In their article ‘Transformational Leadership and Dimensions of Creativity’ Sosik et al. stress the significance of digital anonymity in group projects and how this can lead to a lack of motivation due to an absence of immediacy.  (Sosik, Kahai, & Avolio, 1998)

To combat this, I would schedule more face-to-face meetings in future group projects.

----GROUP RESPONSIBILITY----

The group cited outside factors such as conflicting schedules in addition to the aforementioned motivational issues, but this kind of problem affected all of us to some degree, and the project was still able to be worked on.

Using Julian Rotter’s definition, this translates into a group-wide feeling of an external locus of control, (that external factors determine the effectiveness of one’s actions, as opposed to any concentrated individual effort)  (Rotter, 2004)

A lot of my work required the input of aesthetic assets from my group, and so progress was slow in creating vital assets.

Next time, I will try to motivate my group to better self-efficate, maybe using Blumenfield et al’s framework of project-based learning. This methodology would focus on making sure that my team actually understands the reasons behind their workload, and thus inform some kind of motivative factor.  (Blumenfeld et al., 1991)

I would have been able to bypass this deficiency by doing it myself, but I didn’t want to do the majority of the work, preferring a workload shared equally among group members.

Should I have pushed on and done the work regardless?

----PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THOUGHTS----

However, based on feedback from other people in my group, I have been an effective leader alongside AJ in organizing and motivating those willing to work.

And so exists a discrepancy between my action as perceived by me, and as perceived by my group.

Existing literature on the subject of group work, especially concerning an imbalance of work, is in line with my thinking that the other people in my group, who haven’t contributed to the group work should not be rewarded the same as everyone else. (Conway & Kember, 1993) As the project manager, I want to consider excluding some members of the group if the project does end up going forward, which is based on feedback received from Noelwenn that our project could be included in Auckland Live’s 2017 ‘Summer in the Square’ event.

The idea that something I helped produce could end up exhibited to many people in a public forum is extremely exciting.

To further this, the opportunity to showcase and bring knowledge of personally-important environmental issues would be an amazing experience.

However, there has been a large failure to communicate across the group as effectively as we could have done.

----COMMUNICATION---- 

During meetings, I found oral communication to be a direct and effective way of introducing creativity through direct, yet novel communication, allowing for the quick exchange of divergent thinking. This is in line with the ideas introduced in the literature by Hughes and Large (1993) that there is a correlation between effective communication through oral communication and written/textual communication but concedes that there is a more immediate benefit to oral communication insofar as opening a dialogue between peers  (Hughes & Large, 1993).

--------

I find it almost poetic how the mechanics of our game reflect the different work ethics within our group.

There are the Walkers; people that are willing to sacrifice personal convenience (walking long distance/working hard) for the social good of a larger group (a higher quality end product/grades?).

Then there are the Drivers; people that are willing to destroy social good (polluting/being lazy) in order for personal gain/convenience/easy grades/stickers.

I think the distribution of these types within our group is pretty evident.

----WORK ETHICS/FRAMEWORK----

While we many ideas from the outset, we really should have started prototyping mechanically from the outset, using rapid, small-scale systems, based on feedback we received after the degree-wide playtest.

We attempted the Scrum methodology through standing meetings, internal reflection, and the free-form format of task delegation, as outlined by Azanha, Argoud, Camargo Junior, & Antoniolli in ‘Agile Project Management with Scrum’  (Azanha et al, 2017) but we had issues adhering to this format, and instead focused on the delegation of individual tasks by week.

This was a fault of my leadership, as I should have researched a better way of motivating my team and achieve a better end result.

If I ever head a project again, I will use a predetermined way of organizing a group, to construct a more effective group workflow. The fault, I feel, was not with Azanha et al’s framework, just my adherence to it.

----GOING FORWARD----

Going forward, a project of this magnitude would be an invaluable opportunity to network, as well as show our hard work in this paper to a large audience, but would also involve an enormous amount of extra work to meet the 27th December deadline. However, I feel up to the task, even if my co-creators have some doubts about their possible involvement with the project.

I have been in contact with Noelwenn Lacire, Anastasia Dailianis and Anders Falstie-Jensen from Auckland Live, in an effort to organize our group project being featured in the 2017 Aotea ‘Summer In The Square’ event.

I was told there is a fair chance of this happening, as the issues of transport and pollution relate largely to Auckland’s urban setting, as well as the larger New Zealand eco-conscious zeitgeist.

The focus towards a younger demographic was also noted, however, these are thoughts that will need to be discussed between now and the 27th of December, with the relevant parties.

This is Richard Roach, signing off for 2017; thank you to my team: Quentin, AJ, Beth, Daniel, Jieya and Angie for your continued hard work, and thank you to Ben Kenobi for your inspiring and extremely helpful tutelage.

----BIBLIOGRAPHY----

Azanha, A., Argoud, A. R. T. T., Camargo Junior, J. B. de, & Antoniolli, P. D. (2017). Agile project management with Scrum. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 10(1), 121–142. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMPB-06-2016-0054

Blumenfeld, P. C., Soloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991). Motivating Project-Based Learning: Sustaining the Doing, Supporting the Learning. Educational Psychologist, 26(3–4), 369–398. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.1991.9653139

Conway, R., & Kember, D. (1993). Peer assessment of an individual’s contribution to a group project. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 18(1), 45.    Ellemers Academy of Management Review 29(3) 2004 u.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/bitstream/handle/1871/17293/Ellemers%20Academy%20of%20Management%20Review%2029%283%29%202004%20u.pdf?sequence=2

Hughes, I. e., & Large, B. j. (1993). Staff and peer-group assessment of oral communication skills. Studies in Higher Education, 18(3), 379–385. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079312331382281    

Lecture-20-Cognition-wrap-up-Begin-Emotions.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://ubc-emotionlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Lecture-20-Cognition-wrap-up-Begin-Emotions.pdf    

Rotter, J. (2004). Psych 305A: Lecture 20. University of British Columbia.  

Sosik, J. J., Kahai, S. S., & Avolio, B. J. (1998). Transformational Leadership and Dimensions of Creativity: Motivating Idea Generation in Computer-Mediated Groups. Creativity Research Journal, 11(2), 111–121. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326934crj1102_3