I see the weekly prompt as more of a set of guidelines to help direct my thought. Blogging is inherently an individual activity; I'm writing about what I think, correct? There's feedback for the program and self-reflection. Answering all the feedback points is important to the growth of the program, but in the case of self-reflection, it's personal. So if I stick too closely to the prompt, am I not stifling my creativity?
I think I said this last week, but in deciding not to spend the gratuitous amount of coming to weighty conclusions about my life and future, I ended up arriving at some weighty conclusions about my life and future. They are summarized as follows:
I have a general idea of where I am currently, and U have a general plan through the next year and a half. Beyond that, I don't know where I want to go with my life (airport metaphor). One of the few things I do know with certainty is that I want to be successful. And at this point in the ever-(d)evolving saga of my life, being successful meanings being able to spend an inordinate amount of time on a beach. Doing a whole lotta nothing.
On to the next one.
I think that Eddie and Sarah included our family/friends in this challenge because they were bored with seeing how the fellows interacted with each other. They wanted to mix it up, get some fresh faces and fresh personalities on the scene. Working with the same people can result in similar dynamics evolving repeatedly; you know (or think you know) how someone will act or react - the situation is lacking in ambiguity.
To fulfill their duty for continued ambiguity, they brought in a guest per person. This actually maximizes ambiguity because there are lines of communication that have already been established. BUT, only the guest's host is familiar with the guest (his or her personality, skillset, etc.); all the rest of the fellows have to annex this relationship into their social outlook.
Several fellows brought parents as their guests; this brings up something interesting. Fellows would be considered "young people" by the parents - meaning "lacking in experience". The parents, on the other hand, have a considerable amount of experience under their belts; things relevant to the challenge would be dealing with people (leading and following), adjusting and adapting to unfamiliar circumstances, cooking, eating, etc. On the other hand, the fellows have been working on their self-awareness; it doesn't make up for experience, but, it is valuable research.
From a personal standpoint, I know I'm not fully there in applying everything I learned from the extensive battery of tests I took. Regardless, the "general public" doesn't always have access to the same tools. I'm not trying to rate the merits years of experience in the real world against self-awareness. I'm trying to imply that experience doesn't lead to self-awareness, or that being a young person means you don't have any experience to draw from.
The overall I'm point trying to make is to point out the two majority groups will likely draw on different sources of information for reference when it comes to teamwork situations. The old folks have been around the block a few times, and their pools of knowledge are quite a bit deeper that ours.
With my mom their, I was on my best behavior; that meant watching my choice of adjectives and keeping the inappropriate stories to myself.
One goal that my team had was to plate all of our food by the time the clock read 00:00. It went pretty well. I definitely got a little nervous at about the four-minute mark though. My mom even mentioned it. It wasn't a bad nervous though; just reading the time off for my team (since we couldn't see the clock) making sure we had all our plates, and just helping out where I could.
I can't find my list of competencies so I'll see how this goes. Obviously communication was important. We had an initial idea session where we brainstormed possible ingredient combinations.My time made several dishes; a couple of these seemed like really solid ideas, so they got started right out of the session. As we started on them, I wrote the dishes down and crossed off required ingredients. After that, the team had a bit of fluidity; dishes came on and off the table until were settled on ones that fit our collective vision.
Although we never explicitly dictated it, our vision was defined by making top-notch dishes that incorporated the required ingredients, instead of combining the required (and other) ingredients into a dish; we were chefs first, challengees second. We looked for originality and innovation in our dishes, using both the required ingredients and some of the more random ingredients available to us. One example I remember specifically was the seviche - into which we were able to incorporate the hearts of palm; the judges observed this, and were "happy to see someone use them".
I really enjoyed this challenge. I think my team being awesome was a large part of that. Another major contributor was my affection toward. I like cooking, though I may not be very good at it; I love eating, and I think that love looks fondly back on the preparation process. The challenge was beneficial for all of the ambiguity stuff I talked about above, and because the environment itself was something new. New is always better.
One key thing though - while I graciously accepted the opportunity to NOT clean up after myself, the clean up crew took our food before we were done eating it! I barely filled my plate the first time around, thinking that I'd have the opportunity to get seconds. And I didn't even get my own bread pudding...I had to try it off of the judges plate.
No comments:
Post a Comment