The Dreaded Group Project

To be honest, if I find out an elective I'm taking has a group project, I drop the class.  Group projects, as executed in past classes just don't work as learning experience for me.  Before I started this policy, I was involved in a couple of group projects.  In two different classes I have taken, I have participated in a large group project.

The first group project I had was in a class about linguistics.  The class was large, about a hundred people, and we were in groups of five to six.  We were to give a 10-minute presentation.  Five people in a group is too many to get together outside of class, so the only time we actually met, there were only three of us that showed up.  B&D mention guidelines for group synergy, and one of the is "Agree on the Basics."  Because only a fraction of the group had shown up to the meeting, we were never able to come together as a group to agree on what our direction was and how we were going to achieve it.  Instead of productive talk about the content of the project, all talk became about logistical aspects of the project.  

To add to the problem, there was one girl who wanted to take the leadership role.  She was one of the ones that came to the in-person meeting.  A problem arose from this.  In the e-mails to the other group members, her role as self-proclaimed group leader was not made clear.  Therefore, in the back and forth communications, she would try to take control, and it was easy to see that the other two were pushing back.  She had not established herself in the leadership role to them, so she just came off as pushy and bossy.

The project became less about learning and understanding the subject, and more about endless e-mails back and forth.  It was truly a nightmare.  One group member I knew outside of class, and we were able to make our portion of the project solid and cohesive.  We met on our own and went forward with the few things all five of us agreed on.  The other 3/5 of the presentation, however, seemed totally unrelated once we presented it.  I would say that the largest contributor to to the problem was group size.  Five may not seem like too many people, but when there are RSO, work, and school obligations that each group member must deal with, this greatly complicates things in a project.  The large size then contributed to the lack of agreement on the fundamentals of the project.

The second group project I had worked better on so many levels.  It was for a cinema class.  We were to watch The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and give a 15-minute presentation about the movie.  We met bright and early on a Sunday morning and spent three hours in a round-table discussion and brainstorming session.  We agreed on what we wanted to say, who would say it, and how we would present it.  Not only were we able to agree on the basics, but we also followed B&D's advice to "doubt your infallibility."  The other members of the group came from backgrounds like communication, business, and anthropology.  I was an English major at the time.  We all came to the table with different opinions on the subject matter, but we were eventually able to come together with a cohesive project.

I know we are supposed to be bringing juicy stories to the table, but this movie project experience was about as seamless as one could ask for.  I'm actually had I had the second experience so I'd be (slightly) less colored about group projects as a whole.

"Mad Men Lose Their Marbles," Say 4 out of 5 Doctors!

In the world of advertising, agencies will have the creative department structured into teams of two who then report to a higher office. These teams are composed of an Art Director, in charge of the graphics and a Copywriter, responsible for coming up with the print and arrangement of the advertisement. After the creation of an ad, these teams will then have their work reviewed by the Creative Director who decides whether or not it is a viable direction for a campaign to move forward with and present to the client.

A campaign that is liked by the client and is considered successful can have great repercussions for all parties involved. The Art Director and Copywriter are seen having a successful campaign.  The Creative Director shows his management and his ability to pick out a good campaign.  The agency as a whole gains reputation and respect.  In addition, an agency can use their past work to attract new clients.

Because a successful campaign can be so lucrative, often agencies and the creatives are eager to claim responsibility and have their hard worked recognized. Most times, however, the agency reaps the recognition reward, while the Art Director, Copywriter, and Creative Director are just internally recognized.  In this case, the agency has more of the marbles than the three who worked on the campaign.

The author writes, "If the Democrats really want to get moral psychology working for them, I suggest that they focus less on distributive fairness — which is about whether everyone got what they deserved — and more on procedural fairness—which is about whether honest, open and impartial procedures were used to decide who got what."  In the ad agency example, it seems like the normal for this sort of hierarchy of recognition to happen.  In any office, the manager is going to get more positive recognition from the top than those doing the footwork.  

Despite the fact that proper recognition of ideas can be so valuable, team cohesion among the creatives is of the utmost importance. Marbles must be shared at this level.  It is important for both the Art Director and the Copywriter to feel invested in the campaign that they're working on. Therefore, the manager has to share some of his marbles with the pair.

The nature of the creative process is such that ideas can strike at anytime, whether in the office or not, which means that the team may not be together. If one member of the team came up with a novel idea while he developed on his own, he may refrain from presenting the wholly formed idea to the other member but instead guide the direction of the conversation towards his idea, ensuring that the other member will also feel responsible and involved with the work.  In this way, one team member has pulled his rope and is coaxing the other to pull his.  He wants them to reap the marbles, without making it seem like it was his idea to get them in the first place.

Financial Freedom Supplied Gratis

I have been very blessed with my family when it comes to the finances of the future.  My mother is both a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Financial Planner.  My father is a farmer who is very shrewd business man and fairly cheap.  The two of them have been saving money for my brother and I since they first got married.  Neither my brother nor I have to pay for any of our schooling, undergrad or grad, ourselves.  This has freed us both enormously of debt after college, which is a great gift a parent can give their children.

Before I was an Economics major I was an English major.  I didn't choose it because I wanted to pursue a career in English; I chose it because I didn't want to come into college earning credit for nothing.  I think this turned out to be a great decision, because, by the time I decided to change majors, I already had accumulated enough credit for an English minor.  So, with little extra effort, I have been able to get a major and minor.  While some see Econ and English as an odd combination, I have been told that this will work to my advantage.  The English skills I have learned (analysis, clear writing, communication) will help me in any field that I enter.

I have a great job here on campus.  Since I am not paying for my own tuition, I have been able to save a lot of this money for my future.  I have an emergency fund building itself, I have a vacation fund, and various investments that I contribute to.  I am thankful to be ahead of the game.  I'm taking a class in personal finance through ACES and I'm learning more and more about what I need to be doing for the future.  

My brother graduated from Illinois in '08 with a degree in Psychology and a minor in Business.  Right now, he is at graduate school at SIUE, near St. Louis.  He has a job lined up already after graduate school, and I'm hoping to follow a similar path.  I don't think he ever believed he was going to get a job right out of school with his degrees, and I somewhat feel the same way.  I do believe, however, that he has managed his situation well.  What else could somewhat want then a Masters and a job right out of the gate?

If the career fair is any indication, most employers look bewildered when I tell them I'm in Economics.  This indicates to me that I am going to have a tough time finding a job that directly relates to my major when I leave school.  I'm okay with this; I've read that college is mostly about showing employers what one's capable of.  One's not necessarily expected to take triple derivatives on the first day.

To fully answer the prompt, I would say that my actions now have set me up for a risk of low income.  However, my actions now have also set me up well in order to deal with this larger risk.  In a perfect world, I'll get a great job and I'll build a stable financial foundation.  In a more realistic world, I'll struggle to find a job and be forced to chip into my savings.  I'm content with this.  I know there are students out there that are in a lot worse situations than I am.  I'm just thankful to have a CPA for a mother, even if her work stories have me nodding off in less than a minute.

Charging an Arm & a Leg with a Bowtie & Smile

I work for University Catering here on campus.  I am a student supervisor, a bartender, or a server depending on my assigned shift.  Catering is a branch of University Dining Services; the other branch feeds students in the dorms.  Dining Services has a head, and then each branch has a person in charge.  There are two levels of managers, and then there are students, like myself.  There are roughly 250 students that work part-time for University Catering.

Working for Catering has really given me perspective about organizations.  I have worked there more than three years, and I have seen the organization work like a well-oiled machine, and I have seen it break down horribly.  One way that it works effectively is in the staffing of events.  There are algorithms that the company uses to do everything from scheduling students to booking events.  For example, an event that has 120 people requires one buffet line.  Any more than 120 guests and there must be two buffet lines.  The same thing applies to bars provided.  If there are more than eighty guests, two stand-alone bars are used.  Less than eighty and only one is required.  This works well because everyone in Catering knows these numbers, so everyone from the chefs to the servers knows always to accommodate for this.

When the organization breaks down, it is a headache for everyone.  The biggest problem that happens involves notes about bookings.  Rooms and events are booked months in advance, and each event is different and includes different specific notes about what needs to be done special.  For example, there may be someone who cannot have dairy in any form, or perhaps the mother of the bride is allergic to a specific common flower.  When these notes are not meticulously recorded and made common knowledge to the staff, problems arise.  I have been to weddings where the bride was allergic to peanuts and the oil the chefs used contained peanuts.  This sort of breakdown in communication causes the most problems for the staff, and those higher up are only chided for such hiccups.  This has made it so there is not too much incentive to be meticulous on the part of the higher ups, while the staff is constantly alert of these problems.

Transaction costs in Catering are the bulk of the costs passed onto the guests.  The food is not made onsite, so there is a transportation fee.  To have waiters serve the food versus a buffet line, a large cost is added.  For special requests that are not standardly available, there is a large cost for the consumers. For example, I worked a graduation for a wealthy family.  The grandfather of the graduate wanted to do celebratory shots of Maker's Mark with his grandson.  This had not been ordered before hand.  To provide the bottle of Maker's Mark, my manager had to phone a truck where the liquor is kept.  A guy had to come unlock the liquor storage, a trucker had to bring it to the event, and a TIPS-trained (legally able to bartend) server had to come to serve the Maker's Mark.  All of this made the bottle cost $112 instead of the retail price of about $32.

The Cost of Opportunism

Both my parents work long hours at their jobs, and they don't want to have to come home at the end of a long week and clean.  So, we have a woman who comes and cleans every fortnight.  She is rough and tumble sort -- it's hard to find good cleaning crews in rural Illinois.  Imagine Sally, from the 90's sitcom Third Rock from Sun.  She brings an assistant every week, and it's often a different one each time.  

One of the assistants took a chance to act opportunistically, and stole a gift card from our house.  I can see her mindset, though; a gift card just lying around someone's house, who's going to miss that?  Most don't even get used!  ($41 billion dollars have gone unclaimed in gift cards since 2005, according to NPR).  I did miss this gift card, however, because I was planning on purchasing something with it the very day she took it!  She later admitted to taking it.

It got me to thinking, though, the main cleaning woman who owns the business has endless opportunities to pilfer from the homes she cleans, but she seems like a really honest woman.  I think in her career line opportunism, very unethical opportunism, would be a rampant problem.  Little things from peoples' homes could go missing with no one the wiser.  I believe that she doesn't because her reputation is at stake, and if she is thought to steal, her business would be ruined.  Word travels fast in a rural area.  "good things come out to those who wait," and those who are honest.

On this campus, I feel that many people have a chance to act opportunistically with their parents’ money.  Many students have credit cards that their parents blindly pay without scrutinizing.  I know of some people that take advantage of this, but one of my friends told me the other day that he never would do that.  He knows it would be easy, and that his parents would never catch on.  However, he says that he feels that it isn't his money to spend on frivolous things.  When he makes non-necessity purchases, he thinks to himself, “Would my parents buy this for me if they were with me.”  With something like Grand Theft Auto 5, probably not.  With something like a colander, yes.

A lot of students do take their parents’ livelihood into consideration, which is definitely the most ethical way to deal with a carte blanche credit card.  I imagine this is because, at this stage in our lives, we start thinking about our parents’ money differently.  When we start paying our own bills, buying groceries, etc., we realize that our parents’ money isn't an infinite supply.  Ethics really starts to take a hold of whether or not youngsters are opportunistic with their parents’ money or not.

Elinor Ostrom Blog Blurb

     Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012) was an American-born political scientist and economist.  She won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics.  Her major work involved explaining and complicating the classic economic idea involving the tragedy of the commons.  "It's a problem, it's just not necessarily a tragedy," Ostrom said in a 2009 interview.  "The problem is that people can overuse [a shared resource], it can be destroyed, and it is a big challenge to figure out how to avoid that."  Her research uncover many examples where a shared resource, such as pastures in the Alps, were used by many members of the community.  She stated that modern economists were "wrong to indicate that people were helplessly trapped and the only way out was some external government coming in or dividing it up into chunks and everyone owning their own."  Instead, she argued and showed examples of how by doing something small for the common good, such as building a fence around the entire pasture versus dividing it up helped everyone and contributed to a lack of the tragedy of the commons.  The Guardian writes, "Her work was for a long time considered far outside the mainstream of American political science."