In Penultimate Peril

Time is of the essence. Now mid-week in the last stretch of our stay at Cornell, things are getting a little chaotic.

With report revisions, memos, Excel charts, readings, and CHESS runs due left and right, in addition to the Excel matrix-ing and hotel overbooking strategies we're learning in class, it's hard to manage personal-grade assignments with group projects. Of course, new on our list as of this week, is the Goliath class-concluding group CHESS report. I don't want to make it seem bigger than it is, but when it's worth 25% of my total grade, it's a behemoth.

It's a challenge partly because it's a project to be divvied up (hopefully not butchered) into sections assigned individually one to a single group member. While individuality is what makes us awesome, when everyone is so unique with his/her own style, viewpoints, and writing voice, it's hard to meet the expectation of a single, consistent, cohesive, and flowing voice, as if a report by one author rather than four. It's a tough job for the group with many decisions to make ASAP.

I loathe having to play bad cop. While it's viewed as necessary to keep the group on track, it's such a self-alienating experience. I'm feeling it's hard to mix business with friendship, but maybe it's because I'm a pessimist who takes things too seriously. There's just so much to do and my own assignments to fret about on the side.

I wonder how we'll manage to get everything together and presentable by early Friday, when we haven't started and I keep fighting myself to not be the horrible boss I've been my entire secondary school career. I'm not being true to myself. But, I trust my group mates to take their own initiative. It's a strange, unwelcome rush like being blindfolded and in a speeding car, but this time I'm in the backseat.