Diplomatic classwork

So, grad school is actually school. I mean, they actually expect a large amount of work produced by their students, who normally have full time jobs. oh well, I took the class, I will do the work. I have one class that is working out well, but keeping me busy.

Take last week for instance, we have a group that is formulating a strategic plan for the organization of our choice, which turns out to be a no-kill animal shelter. Well, I volunteered to produce the Powerpoint, and when finalized, was asked to put in notes for the presentation. No problem sez I, I shall write out the entire script for our little production. I imagine after it was over, I should have put in a slide that said, "Executive Producer - Rob Williamson", "Screenplay - Rob Williamson".

Our group consists of a metallurgist from Special Metals, a help desk manager from the med school, a former HS teacher from Cameroon, and myself. The metallurgist has been in China for the last few weeks, so the med school manager and I handled the presentation. It went well, and she and I got an email that said we set the standard for the evening. Nice, and I got an acknowledgement from the group about the good work. I don't mind credit where credit is due, so that was nice as well.

Now, at the end of class, we get yet another presentation, to present our ideas on our grad program's evaluation matrix (yeah, yeah, don't ask). Well, everyone puts in their ideas, and since no one offered to combine the thoughts into one format, and it was the day before the due date, I assumed the responsibility. I pared down everyone's ideas to the commonalities and listed them in the matrix. I send them out with explanation and wait. Well, I got a call from the member from Cameroon. He wants to come up and discuss. Basically, he wanted to come up and lobby for his choices that were omitted from my finalized matrix. I spent a good 30 minutes with him, saying, "Well, now how do you see that as an opportunity?", or "Do you think these two can be combined?" In the end, it worked out pretty well. I think we will do fine.