Rehearsals - Task 9 - We Go Together

[Lex Green]

It’s time to get rehearsals underway! Cast members need to get to work learning the lines written by the writers, directors need to start creating their vision, and other creative team members need to start getting to work on their designs. Rehearsals are all about getting all these parts ready for the show, but also, putting them together, working out how they fit, and making sure every part is in the right place at the right time.

Task:
Solve this math square puzzle - https://postimg.cc/9Dwp8b8P

Alternatively, in at least 125 words, describe a time when you had to work as part of a team to achieve a task.

This task is worth 10 beans/sapphires, with an additional 10 bonus beans/sapphires available for completing all Week Three (Rehearsals) tasks by the end of activity (January 31st.)

[Hiya Debnath]

There have been many instances in my life when I had to work as part of a team to achieve a task. Some of them were during my youngest years when I was in Muggle school. One day, all of my classmates and me were planning to surprise our Maths teacher on his birthday because we all liked him very much. He was a funny and talented person who somehow managed to make Maths very interesting. There was a bulletin board at the back of the classroom, and a section of it was completely dedicated to anything creative that the students could put up. We decided to use that section to surprise our Maths teacher. During the lunch break, a week prior to his birthday, we started the preparations by forming a plan. Of course, planning would be the most logical first step. We held a secret meeting during the lunch break and decided to distribute duties among ourselves and bring out an amazing final result. Seven of my classmates, who were good at painting, doodling, and/or drawing, were assigned the task of creating seven different greeting cards. Thirteen others, including me, were asked to create the letters in the word "Happy Birthday" from cardboard or thermocol, one letter per student. A certain fixed dimension was decided upon for each of us to follow while creating the letters, so that the letters in "Happy Birthday" would look uniform. Proportions were very important when it came to Maths class. The remaining five students in the class were tasked with putting five different solved math problems from among the most difficult ones in our syllabus that year, on five different sheets of paper, one problem per student, and writing a thank you note reading "Thank you for teaching us how to solve this" underneath each problem. We completed our respective tasks and on our Maths teacher's birthday, we took our creations to school with us. The Maths class was in the first period, so we got to work pinning up the five sheets of paper containing the math problems and also the letters forming the words "Happy Birthday" on the section of the bulletin board reserved for students' creativity. We left the seven greeting cards arranged in the form of a heptagon on the teacher's desk and waited for our Maths teacher to walk in. When he did, he noticed nothing at first, but as he settled down and was about to place his book and stationery on the teacher's desk, he noticed the greeting cards. It put a big smile across his face and he looked at all of us beaming, and said "Thank You". The very next second, he also noticed the colorful section of the bulletin board, that particularly stood out that day because of the creations we had pinned up. That made our Maths teacher very emotional and happy. He hugged us all one by one and though a little bit of study time was wasted that day during the Maths period, that was truly a very emotional and happy incident for us. Working together can be fun. Whether the members of a team focus on individual tasks that are part of a bigger project or whether they discuss and participate in the same task altogether, the final result makes everyone involved happy, and everyone's contribution is very important like the pieces of a puzzle. Even if one piece is missing or out of proportion, the puzzle cannot be completed. In the same way, everyone's contribution, no matter how minimal, is very crucial to the final outcome in any team endeavor.

[Artemisia Thorne]

Probably my favourite memory of a time when I had to work as part of a team to achieve a task would be Christmas several years ago, when my siblings were still quite wee. My stepdad gave us some money and dropped us off in town to buy my mum Christmas gifts from the lot of us. It was pretty tough, cause they were still at that age where I needed to keep my eyes on them at all times and hold their hands to make sure they didn’t run into the road, and I was only a young teenager myself, but we had such a great time picking out gifts for our mum. I got them involved in all of the selecting, calculating how much money we had and everything, it was awesome. Then on Christmas Day we had to work together again to try get everything under the tree without her hearing us, that part didn’t go as well as we’d hoped, she heard us moving around and came to investigate just as we were trying to tuck the gifts under the tree. It was great to see the look on her face when she realised what we had done, she still describes it as her best Christmas.

[Adeline Morior]

Although I have worked in teams in the past, it hasn’t been my favourite since I tend to be the hard working one and everyone else not so much. I do have to say that I have worked well as a team in my Huffle kitchen raid team, team lunch shout out. My best time and the time I learned the most is working as a team with the Ravenclaw staff, Professors, Prefect and Reserves. Planning events and setting up activities have been loads of fun. I learned a lot about how each person thinks, what type of things they like and how well we can work together to achieve the best we can, and have fun in the process. Having a dedicated list of tasks and things you need to do to contribute and to help each other when things get too much. I love it.

[Dibyarup James Potter]

It was time for the Durga Puja last year when I was charged with heading the decorations for the pandal in our area. It was a big project and had a lot of elements to be taken care of, such as the idols, the clothing for the idols, the jewellery and decorative weapons for the goddess Durga.

I made a list of the things that needed to be done at different locations and divided the work among groups of two people. There were a total of 5 teams since we had 11 people on board including me.

Team one was responsible for talking to the sculptor and ordering the idols, and then later on going to collect the idols with a truck. Team two was responsible for talking to the people who took orders for the articles of clothing for the idols, as well as the decorative weapons. Team three was responsible for contacting and later coordinating the singers, musicians and other entertainers and also the light and sound engineers for the six-day-long event. Team four was responsible for contacting and later coordinating with the food vendors, and hiring the workers to build the pandal. Team five was responsible for finding volunteers for crowd management and other errands, as well as arranging security. I was responsible for communicating information between the teams and bringing in more sponsors to fund our venture, and I was also responsible for obtaining the legal permissions required from the police and government authorities.

However, this was the first time I was given a leadership role, so I also had to be in constant touch with the previous lead, who was also my mentor and advisor throughout the festival. In the end, the event was a grand success, and we managed to deliver a very fun and entertaining experience. We even won three awards for our pandal decorations, our idol decorations and the overall experience we provided people with.

Even though this was my first time leading something this big, I managed to enjoy myself and learn a lot from the experience.

[Viviana Kingston]

The last time I worked in a team to get a task done it was an absolute disaster. I was working in a trio, and the task was to create a water powered car because well, we’re engineering majors, they have to task us with unusual stuff like that but there was no sense of unity. We initially did things ourselves, creating over 6 prototypes in total, until we realised that we needed to use the parts that were working in some models to replace the parts that weren’t working. And for some reason, any time 2 of us agreed on something, the last person would always have something to complain or disagree about (I also found myself taking that position) but it was mostly just because we didn’t have enough time to get things done together because I was working on their schedule and not my own. We eventually came to a mutual understanding and I feel I’m better equipped in stressful group situations than I was before.