October - Partnering

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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My next PowerPoint presentation was for Prof Gerard's class. This had to be with a partner of one's choosing. Two students must select a recent newsmaker, from recent news, to interview further about whatever it is about him or her that is making news. I panicked. My classmates had already formed groups, friends, partnerships and I did not belong to any of those categories. I could think only of Carol, who had not been in class for a week due to court appearances for her divorce.

I called Carol and she assured me she would be available to help me do the thing. Her time and availability was very unstable what with her daughter, ex-husband, finances and travel problems, but she had the fire in her belly and the maturity I had not spotted in too many of my other possible partner choices. We set to it, phoned a bunch of people we found in the newspaper. The first one to call back was one of Carol's ideas. Carol talked to him from her home which is two cities away from mine.

Carol got the interview, so the only thing for me to do was to design the presentation. I consider myself fairly talented in the design department and had no problem putting her interview into a visual context. We worked very hard on this assignment and I sent the finished presentation to her about 10 PM Thursday night. Friday morning we had to present it.

Friday morning I was up there while Carol screened the PowerPoint and I was surprised to discover that she had changed my design totally - but totally! Only one slide was recognizable as mine, so I panicked as had become a habit with me by this time. I insisted on talking to Gerard about it.

Carol got all upset and thought I was going to dump on her but that was not what I was planning to do. We had talk and a beer over it and I explained what upset ne was that I had no idea how to keep control of my work in a group work situation. I I wanted to ask Gerard how we were to make sure that our work would stand out in a group's.

The reason I was worried about this was, of course, again, I knew sometime in the future I would have to work with "them", the young ones and being on totally different planets vis-a-vis thinking, planning, studying, experiencing and producing I wanted to know how to keep some kind of control over my own work integrity.

I dreaded having to work with "them". I had already worked on magazines and newspapers and had gone through quite a few trials and tribulations to be a productive individual under trying circumstances. They had not. I didn't want to be like them, acting clued out and jumping into the first joke to avoid dealing with the assignment.

I was afraid I would have to play the role of mommy or teacher, dragging them along after me. In some ways this was not a bad option, but I had to be realistic also, If I was to be an effective mommy or teacher I had to answer the question, "Well, what the hell are you doing here then, with us?" Yeah.

Gerard helped Carol and I resolve our conflict. I had to admit her design was better, but he said next time make it clear ahead of time what your terms within a partnership are. If I want design approval, state that ahead of time. If I want responsibility for one part of the project only than I should make that obvious, and make it clear I would not allow it to be changed behind my back. I felt better after that, but not much.

Mid-term exams were coming up, I was consumed with studying as I had not done in 40 years, and beginning to feel the weight of assignments still to be completed. I was working through all the free periods, any time I had at home, and on weekends. Often I was writing articles late at night that were due the next morning.

I could do this because I had written articles before and could do them quickly according to format, but I could not figure out how anyone who did not have my professional experience and had not read as much as I did could keep up the pace.