Monday, June 13, 2011

Gratitude #27: Team Work

Admittedly, a part of me wants you to shoot me now for admitting that I am grateful for team work.

In high school, I was allergic to group work. It made me irritable and sweaty. Why? Well, in my schools, group work boiled down to misapplied cooperative learning techniques, the end result of which was that MARY DID EVERYTHING. (Yes, the M in MCV stands for Mary. Good for you for picking up on that.)

Also? I was so panicky about getting a good grade that I would volunteer to do the heavy lifting. I didn't trust the others in my group enough to believe they'd be able to knock it out equally well. Lest you think I'm a total egomaniac, my faith in my own academic abilities was not unfounded. I was valedictorian.

But now, I find myself needing to rely on the expertise of others. And it ain't easy. Yet there it is. We all get hired for the different skill sets we bring to the table. No one person has it all. Awesome as I may be, I don't know how to program in SQL. It's like those role-playing games -- the whole point is that you need a group to get through the challenges. Can't do it solo. And that would be creepy, yeah? One player traipsing through adventures of a dungeon master's making, likely dying off because the first enemy dishes out some pain that another type of character could have deflect.

Sweet baby jeebus, I think I'm going to have to punch Super Ninja in the shoulder for infecting my go-to list of analogous experiences with Dungeons and Dragons. Yeesh.

(from Tuesday, June 7)

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