For careers, collaboration is important. When I made my short film recently, collaboration was a huge, massive part of what took place over the months leading up to and during production, however one of the things about your career is that everyone handles themselves with professionalism. They are hired, there is an interview process. I feel like at University, this wall, the kind of filter, doesn’t exist and you could end up with anyone in your group. This presents a problem for me as an only child, seriously, it’s hard work.

In Rachel’s lecture she said that everyone has a different style of collaboration. My style of collaboration is getting ideas, making a definite plan that we all understand and dividing sections of it up, not so much just all in collaboration. I need a piece of the action I can take total responsibility for, end-to-end. Mostly this is just because I can get these moments with intense focus and I can’t share those. My best work is done alone because I can’t get everyone to ride these creative focus waves that I have with me.

Rachel listed the following things as the most important for collaborating in group project settings:

– Consistency

– Respect

– Support

– Responsibility

– Equitability

I think the most important of these is responsibility. In my experience when someone feels like they have no ownership, they won’t buy in. There doesn’t necessarily have to be anything in it for them other than the fact that some of it is theirs, and this is one of the reasons group assignments are so hard because it’s hard to say, this part of the assignment is yours when it’s so important that it be a team effort.