Resurrected?

Well we will see.

This year has been one of the most challenging experiences in my university life. In the third year of my IT degree external clients hire Monash to build them an IT system that they then incorporate into their business operations.

The clients do not pay anything, but in the same respect they are not promised they will receive something of industry standard. It is a "you get what you pay for" situation as the people who are producing the system have no actual technical experience.

All throughout uni i have worried about what would happen when i finally have to participate in one of these industrial experience projects. I am doing a double degree and as such the people that i started uni with had graduated last year. This makes it difficult because by doing units with others you tend to get an indication of their skill level and work ethic, and based on that you are able to select the most appropriate team members to work with.

So as the start of this year began i became very concerned about who the rest of my team members would be. This is a year long project and a rather large burden if you have to carry the majority of the workload yourself.

As i stared out across the lecture theater on my first day, all my eyes fall upon were unfamiliar faces. That was until Evan (someone who i have actually had units with) said hello sat down next to me. This was quite a relief. Evan is an extremely talented person whose technical ability is at the same level (if not better) than my own.

The lecturer went on to give a little introduction about what will be happening over the course of the year and what we could to expect of the experience. When the lecture ended we all headed over to the computer labs for our first studio where we would be selecting who would be on our team.

My heart sank when Evan said he was in a different studio but knowing my luck i wasn't really surprised. I was determined to have Evan in my group so i proceed to ask (rather loudly) to a countless number of strangers whether they would be willing to swap studios with Evan. We eventually convinced someone and my team of one because a definite two. I would have been happy with that, it didn't matter who else was in our group because Evan and myself would have been able to produce what was required.

And then something else happened, Ryan (someone who i had only done one unit with) came up to Evan and asked to join our group. Evan then told me that Ryan was as technically capable as us. I was agog. I honestly couldn't believe my luck. Before the studio had even started i had some how managed to collect arguably (and which became rather apparent throughout the year) THE top people three people in our degree.

So that is how the story of this year began. I'm mentioning this because over the past year i have been writing a chronicle of my experiences working within this group in an attempt to produce a system.

All this writing has lead me back here. Whether this leads to a resurrection, i haven't decided yet. But we will see soon enough.

Till next we meet,
Paul