‘ARDUOUS’ STUDENT LIFE – Group work (‘obstacles’ to be faced)

By, almost, the end of this week off Thailand, Nigeria, Latvia and Guatemala “joined forces” to work on a project for the Sustainable Innovation learning arrangement:   

  
Topic of the project: Is the company PUMA sustainable?    
Goal of the day: Make a Power Point Presentation using the info. we all had already collected.
Amount of time to do it: Actually no time was fixed; but lets say that approximately 5 hours.

Yes. It seems like a simple task to do and a “doable” “goal of the day” to achieve, too.     
And, yes. Everything seemed VERY SIMPLE and VERY DOABLE, UNTIL… Things started to come up, ‘things’ that in this blog post we will call ‘obstacles’.

 

Obstacle no. 1- “Filling up the tank”: Or in other words, eating. Because you know what they say about ‘studying without eating is like trying to drive a car without fuel’… And of course, as students we take that very seriously, because we want to give our 100% of high-quality-work input.

Obstacle no. 2- “Saying the magic words”: Come on! It was a week off, so of course before starting to do something we have to share our week’s adventures (which then lead to having a conversation of 10 or more other topics); definitely, an indispensable step to take in order to being able to fully concentrate on working in our project afterwards.

Obstacle no. 3- “What are magic words without a background tune?”: Ups! Somehow a banjo got in our way, which led to giving a short ‘how to play a banjo’ lesson.

Obstacle no. 4- “Before we start… Lets take a few minutes to save memories”: Ok, finally! Everyone was almost about to start! Hands on the laptops. Our minds begin to ‘function in the correct direction’.  
BUT… haven’t you noticed that lately cameras are invading EVERYTHING, from phones, to laptops, to watches (at least in James Bond’s case), just wait a few years and your shoes will be taking pictures on their own while you walk…    
Well, in our case a laptop’s camera was the problem, because it took some other minutes from our ‘precious working time’.

(Hidden) Obstacle no. 5- “LASTLY, LETS GET DOWN TO WORK! (No more obstacles?)”: Yes, finally we did it! We managed to get started!
But, don’t you forget the 21st century student’s ‘archenemies’ when trying to concentrate… If you thought ‘social media’, then yes, you are right.    
By some means, you begin googling information you need, and you end up Facebooking, Twittering or Skyping something else.    
…What have they done to us?

Obstacle no. 6- “Brain damage. We still have time tomorrow anyways!”: Without a doubt, after all the long ‘working’ hours, you end up with completely tired brains. So then, it’s time to stop! And just… postpone it ‘till tomorrow!

(Indirect & final)Obstacle no. 7- “Dehydration”: “Tired brains” don’t necessarily mean “time to go to sleep” (I mean, there is still time and energy to do other important things). So, why not just go to Venlo’s bar Lokomotief and drink something to calm down the thirst?

Hmm... Tomorrow will be another day!

(By the way, today is “tomorrow” and we did manage to finish everything. Yes, mission accomplished!)