Reflection of Week one/Second Year

Week one of the first semester, second year has actually not been too bad. I figured I would be more stressed at this point but in fact the first studio project was quite an enjoyment. Starting with the ten to twenty-five drawings was fun and relaxing. I was actually quite pleased with the outcome of my drawings. I felt more comfortable rendering these drawings with markers than some of the ones that I rendered last year.

I do have to admit that working in a group of about fifteen was harder than I thought it would be. Wednesday of this week our group met for so long trying to come up with an idea of cohesion to combine our nodes, paths, etc. in a certain way. We could have spent the entire night just trying to come up with an idea. I think if we had been more organized during our meeting and not have just tried to blurt out ideas we might have all communicated better with each other. With a large group it is hard to please everybody. I felt that the entire group reviewed our group’s display honestly and with great suggestions in mind. Some of the things that stuck out to me that were mentioned was the display of our squares and how some of the connections between several people’s squares were hard to decipher. I believe that some of these issues could have been addressed if our time frame was larger and the group had schedules somewhat in common. I do have to admit that I really like my group and I think we will work better together in the future. At first I was concerned that since our group contained several new people, which is not a bad thing at all, that we might struggle slightly just because some of us were not use to working with these people. It is easier sometimes to work with people you know already and especially knowing their work ethic. After this project I have realized that I am not going to have any problems working with the group that I was placed in. I think that we as a group will all become good friends as a result of group work.

Friday’s class was quite an experience. I have come to the conclusion along with many other people, I am sure, that working in a group with over fifty people is almost impossible. I found myself getting frustrated with some of my fellow classmates because they had no desire to be included in the class assignment. I think that the worst problem that we as a class encountered was that nobody could seem to be quiet long enough for an idea to be expressed. I found this to be quite rude. With the exception of this small percent most of the class worked pretty well together. We realized as a class that in order to come up with an idea we would need to meet in smaller groups and come up with several ideas. Once we did this we met back together and a representative from each group presented the ideas to the rest of the class. After hearing all of the ideas we as a class voted on a final decision. Like mentioned earlier it is impossible to please everybody. Everybody has his or her own idea on how something should look. Now having worked in a group with fifteen people and a group with fifty people I have concluded that a smaller size group even if it is fifteen people is much better.