When it was
first announced in my WRD 111 class that I was going to have to participate in
a group project, my heart sank to the pit of my stomach. I instantly went from
feeling hopeful about this class, to wanting to go right to the registration
website and drop this class. However, I knew that I had to complete this class,
and therefore this project, so I decided to “suck it up” and try to get through
it. Later on in the semester when we were actually beginning the group
projects, I was even more dejected to find that we were going to be put into
groups – I couldn’t even work with people I knew and knew that I could count
on. With that said, going into this
project, I had every intention of telling my group to screw off and let me do
it myself. However, I was placed in a group of likeminded people, which
more-or-less forced us to work together.
My biggest struggle throughout this
whole project was feeling like I wasn’t doing enough. When picking our topic,
we decided that Carlos (one of my group members) probably had one of the most
interesting and “workable” topics to choose: The Lonely Boys of Haggin Hall. “The lonely
boys of Haggin Hall” as a topic seems now to be a distant memory, because our
topic evolved so much from there. We fully intended on focusing on the chronic
masturbators inhabiting an all-male dorm here at the University of Kentucky.
However, as the project went on, we realized that Haggin is being torn down.
The fact that it was being torn down implied that it was old and no longer at
its prime, and in these facts we found a gem for our project – the glory days,
and lack thereof, for the doomed male residence. The aspect of our project that
I am most proud is probably the vintage footage of Haggin field, or the editing
of footage into thought bubbles as people are speaking. I believe that both of
these contribute to the “then and now” concept of our documentary.
If we had 6 more months to work on
this project, more than anything I would want to track down some of the men who
used to live in and enjoy Haggin. We had a few different people currently
residing there speaking about how terrible it is in its current state, so I
wish that we had some old timers to kind of “stick up” for Haggin, since Haggin
in its current state cannot defend itself. Also, if we had more time, I would
have done more to ensure that our documentary was proofread, and we would have
better sound and video quality. The one very important, absolute biggest aspect
of our documentary that I would change is spelling and grammar mistakes. I
absolutely wanted to bury my head 1000 feet under my desk as each of the many
spelling errors popped up on the screen. Also, I would put my name in the
credits, as Carlos rushed through editing and forgot me.
For our group, I personally was
responsible for the group blog. I was considered the “scriptwriter” and I tried
to help Carlos wherever possible. I feel that I promoted a healthy group
atmosphere by listening to Carlos (as he sort of took over as our group leader)
and clarified when he wasn’t always clear. I also text messaged the group, and
tried to contact them from time to time about our project, whether I could make
it to meetings, etc. Overall I really enjoyed my group, even though I feel that
we could have distributed work more evenly. I wish that I had learned more
about editing so that Carlos wouldn’t have had so much on his plate. I feel
like my group was satisfied with the effort distribution, and I believe that I
contributed all that I could to making sure our project was satisfactory.
