Expository Essay

English 210 with Dr. Amy Hodges turned out to be a much more unique and interesting
academic experience than I expected it to be. The course was formatted in such a manner to
resemble workplace requirements and ethics as closely as possible. Unlike other academic or
STEM courses, this course gave groups the choice to either seek help from higher
administration, in this case, the instructor, or to manage everything internally and only present
your project at the end of the time period. Indeed, the course also bear extreme resemblance
in the time intervals that the groups were given in order to finish crucial tasks or projects.
Often, groups were given up to six or seven weeks, similar to the intervals after which
engineers have to write major progress reports! Out of this format, however, came forward
several clashes of members different ethics, priorities, interests, and most importantly, habits.
Although our group members voluntarily came together at the very beginning of the class in
order to create a group, it would soon appear that we were much more different than we
thought.
Two underlying philosophies towards the workload of the class were evident. The first
philosophy suggested tackling the workload by breaking it into many submissions, no matter
how well or badly written, and construct progress on the feedback that we get back. The
second philosophy advocated splitting the work into very few concentrated work sessions in
which we try to give the best quality of writing we can and only get review as few a time as
possible. In short, the second philosophy was one of, three good drafts are better than ten
poor ones. Our group was split exactly in half in terms of where each member stood on the
matter. Since I was in favor of the second philosophy, I had to find ways to justify my seemingly
dismissive attitude. It is always easier for someone to misconceive my words for laziness or
indifference. Yet, having a good academic standing myself, I can confidently say I have been
often able to identify the thin line between working hard and working smart. Still, convincing
group members of what you are confident in is not always an easy task, and is one that will
most definitely lead to conflict. Nevertheless, saying that I have reacted to most clashes that
arose during the semester is far from the truth. The course was a journey of its own, one where
stress sometimes got the best of people on one hand, and brought others closer together on
the other.
The most crucial decisions that I had to take during the semester were those that
pertained to when exactly I should conform to the other team members perfectionist habits,
and when exactly I deemed it better to submit material at the frequency I found fit. It is notable
to say that throughout the entire semester I strongly distasted using the brute-force method of
getting work done. Submitting loads of drafts solely to get a better grade defeats the purpose
of learning itself and defeats the real-life education anyone can get out of the class. It seemed
quite odd to see engineering students run away from writing an elegant formula to solve a
problem and turn to plugging in numbers and asking will this work instead. Excessive
repetition does yield learning, that has been quite established throughout time; yet, excessive
repetition is not how I learn and neither is the way for an engineer to learn: you only get one chance to
build a bridge.

There was no single method I used to evaluate every conflict of habit that occurred during the
semester, but there was a general nature to the thought process I went through whenever it was
needed. First, I would ask myself, is the request being made actually crucial to the progress of our
project, or is it only a result of their tendency to save work and energy by submitting excessively many
drafts to Dr. Amy? Is it sensible in terms of work load and time space? The combinations of answers to
each of these questions led to different reactions from my side during the semester. That is, sometimes I
would write multiple drafts in order to satisfy their former philosophical approach to work. At other
times, however, when I am under exam pressure and the request is slightly stretched, I would bluntly
tell them that whatever they are asking for is not the right way of doing things. Weve had multiple
discussions concerning the differences between those two approaches, during which I set my proposed
plan of finishing work. At the first half of the semester, they seemed to agree with what I proposed, or
so would they pretend to be, but as time went by the urge to immediately see the 8/8 on every project
was irresistible. It was not uncommon to hear the phrase, lets get done by this tomorrow so we can
have three drafts submitted to Dr. Amy by the weekend. The continuous group work that had to be
done was an ongoing game of tug-of-war, where I would still explain and point out my approach when
circumstances did not allow me to be flexible, and rest my case and follow the contrasting approach
when I had the chance.

As the semester was drawing near its end, I decided to constrict my communication to
formalities and deadlines. This decision was primarily made because it was apparent by then that part of
the group was water while the other was oil. The language of open-discussion was too tiring by then and
too indecisive. What also pushed me to constrict my communication to simple deadlines was the other
part of the groups acknowledgement that finite work had to be done in finite time. This decision turned
out to be well in the overall groups favor. Had it seemed slightly hurtful to some, I would have changed
my methodology immediately. However, most of us found it efficient and productive.

I do not believe there were any short-term consequences on the quality of work that we
produced throughout the semester. Of course, had we been on the same page or of the same habit, we
would have produced better quality. Nevertheless, the final product that we ended up with was one to
be proud of, and the overall experience a truly learning one.

My approach towards work load and ethics is one that is very hard to shake or amend. I would
not give up my stand simply because it is more convenient. I have been criticized uncountable times for
such mentality, and been told even more times that I would suffer as a result in the work place. So, in
order to be completely honest, I do not believe this class can fundamentally change the way I deal with
group work. What I can say, however, is that this class was a huge eye-opener to how difficult group
work can actually be. As a result, it pushed my cap of expectations, both negatively and positively, of
how well group work can go. This will probably come in handy later on when I need to devise better
methodologies, such as the one I came up with at the very end of the semester, when dealing with
people of completely opposing natures.