As this semester drew to an end I (barely) survived one of the most stressful periods of my life; exhibition preparations. But in all seriousness, as if the final exhibition alone wouldn’t have been stressful enough on its own, I also conveniently decided to move to a whole different part of Austria, plan my master’s project in Lapland and pack for a holiday in Morocco at the same time. In hindsight I do realise that just because things would theoretically fit into my calendar one after the other, each one aligning perfectly, it does not mean that I should squeeze them like that. Each important life event needs some space for preparation, reflection and, most importantly, unexpected problems.
However, even with all of these things in the back of my mind, I still really enjoyed working towards the exhibition together as a team and I am really proud of what we have accomplished. In this blogpost I want to reflect on what worked really well and what didn’t, as well as what I enjoyed and what I just couldn’t wrap my head around.
My main task was being head of the construction and transportation team. This meant working together closely with the architecture team who planned everything that we needed to build later on. The real brains behind the whole operation were the members of the overall exhibition planning team. They did an incredible job of coordinating and organising everyone else. I also found it good to be in close contact with the other teams and being able to coordinate every step with the others. Unfortunately, I believe this is also where some of the issues arose, because a lot of the time, if a whole team was addressed via the group chat for example, 9 out of 10 people didn’t react and the one person that did was probably overworked already. So I believe, in projects like these there will always be people that need a bit more of a push to do their share of work instead of acting proactively.
This is also something where I realised one of my weaknesses lies; bossing people around. Because half of the time, I was being too nice and just asking if anyone could maybe help with some task and the other half of the time, I felt incredibly mean, telling people to do something because I let my annoyance get the better of me and dished it out to someone who isn’t at fault. Also I have noticed that my brain isn’t made for coordinating large groups, large amounts of projects or items, or anything of the sorts. The plans I told people concerning transportation kept changing because I talked to others about who all had a different opinion on things and let their opinions influence me and the decisions I had already made instead of sticking with them.
I think in the area of project management, I am just lacking the knowledge and confidence to stand in front of people and act like I know what I am doing. I constantly needed a second person to share my responsibilities with or share the burden of decision-making with.
I really hope that in future projects I will be able to take responsibility for my own actions without having to hide behind somebody else. Maybe once I have gained some more experience, or maybe I just have to fail once and take the full blame for it, in order to find out that it will most likely not be the end of the world, but instead just human.
