Week 5 - General things

Rika Matsubara-Park - Sun 5 April 2020, 9:21 pm
Modified: Sun 5 April 2020, 9:27 pm

In terms of my team and the assessment, we lost two team members, and gained a new one. It was expected, and I had the slightest consideration to defer the course, however my current course plan would not allow it, if I wanted to graduate this year. I've already delayed my program a year, and it's not ideal for me mentally and financially to extend my studies (those GoCard fees are no joke). Anyhow, this quarantine situation has certainly brought about a lot of change, and when I get adapted to one thing, something else changes. In this case, that was my team. It was sad to see my team members leave, especially since I was interested in seeing where they would go with their concepts, and I felt we had gotten along well. We bid them farewell, and I wished them all the best with their studies. It sucks for all the students and the teaching staff that so many unprecedented changes had to happen. I just hope we all make it in the end, and it's as much fun as I'd hoped it would be going into the course. Our new team member, Jen, is a familiar face, so there was not much need to warm up to each other. I think the first few weeks of the course where we talked to different members of the course is to thank for, since normally I would not know many people outside of my friend circle. Jen's team was also looking at a concept rather similar to our team's, so we had a discussion on how we would want to approach the project. We decided it fit nicely within our scope, as long as we described it as something along the lines of "Musically-enhanced learning for primary school children", since our concepts weren't based on the current school curriculum, but still aimed to provide an educational value.

In terms of the report, we broke it down into its sections, and designated different parts to each team member. We established that many parts were dependent on other sections and that a lot of it would be collaborative, however the sections written by individual team members. This meant that we'd have to write some parts before others; I'm responsible for writing the response to feedback, so I have had to use blog posts and individual sections in the report to get an understanding of what and how my team members responded to, and the commonalities of our team as a whole. For the most part, we approached things differently, especially since we each had diverse interests in primary school education, which is why I believed it was necessary to make some mention of individual responses.

There's certainly a lot of work to be done, but with the pressure leading up, and my desire to have a mid sem break that I feel I've actually deserved, I'm trying to do the work I can. I could definitely be a lot more productive, and the productivity tips from Lorna and the rest of the cohort have been somewhat effective, but I'm learning it all comes down to my self discipline. In all honesty, I felt I was losing myself the past week, but after some time in the sun I've regained myself a little, and in my current state I'm pumped to do my best until Friday evening, rest a little, then complete the work necessary over the mid sem break (while also making time for some games with friends, if I feel I deserve it).