One day, when I was in class, Dhir asked me to MC for Culturama and I agreed to. Thus started a whirlwind of Culturama madness. One day I was a regular civilian, minding my business, the next I was receiving a barrage of emails with information on who the other MC would be, the needs for the script, and regular updates on new things that the script needed to be. I wasn’t sure how to do it, but Vivian and I were given a deadline to write the script by. Learning outcome five is to “Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively”. We started working together, but from computers in completely separate locations. This gave me a unique view on the benefits and challenges of collaboration. Maybe it wasn’t the best form of collaboration, but we also discussed it at school.
I began to realize that collaboration could decrease workload if done well, enrich the product, and make me learn new ways of thinking about and doing things. I didn’t have to write half the script, which decreased my stress levels a lot. I got feedback on what I wrote, which made me think more about what I wrote and improve it. I also got a bit of a peek into Vivian’s mind and the different ways we could write the script. I had approached it from a very formal and informative standpoint, but Vivian reminded me that scripts can be funny too. Unfortunately, this initial collaboration was a double-edged sword. I didn’t get to write half the script, meaning I had less control over it, I got some negative feedback on things that I still think might’ve worked well, and part of me feels like I got forced into doing a cheesy script. However, it wasn’t only two of us who had an input. In this entire process we were getting emails from a myriad of people who all wanted different things, which really complicated the process, and I think was bad for the script.
