Lacking Teamwork, Lacking Success by Hannah

Lacking Teamwork, Lacking Success by Hannah - August 2014 Scholarship Essay

Failure is defined as a lack of success or a falling short, according to Webster’s Dictionary. Most of us have experienced failure first hand, whether it be with work, school, or relationships. My most recent encounter with failure took place during a group project for my product development class during my first year at the Fashion Institute of Technology. While this was one of the most challenging experiences I have encountered in my educational career thus far, I came out of the experience having learned a lesson and gained a new perspective on teamwork.

During the spring semester of my first year in college, I enrolled in a product development course. The course was centered on preparing for our final group project where we were expected to create a product line for the company of our choice. After receiving our assignment, I quickly joined a group of four other girls who seemed to be as eager and motivated as I was. We all met as a team and read over the prompt as to get an idea of how we should approach our project. We met one other time with some ideas for our project and all together we decided to do our project on a clothing line for the store Madewell.

After we had our store and topic chosen, we split up the work so that each person was in charge of a different portion of the project. We had just over two weeks to complete this project and planned on meeting a few more times to go over everything as a group. Although the group started strong, the further we got into the project and the closer it became to the deadline, the less communication we had. It was easy to see our project suffer as our group members slowly put less time and effort into it. I was in charge of compiling the project and would try to contact the rest of the group every couple of days to get them to send me their work. After many unanswered phone calls, texts and emails, I had to pull them all aside after class and talk to them. I didn't receive everyone’s information until the morning the project was due. I quickly threw together a presentation and sent it to the rest of the group so they could prepare for the presentation.

On presentation day, we saw that all the other teams seemed very put together. They had coordinated outfits and had binders and boards ready to present. Because we were so focused on simply finishing the project, we didn't have enough time to prepare for the presentation day itself. We presented our barely-finished project to the class and sat back down, embarrassed with the quality of our presentation in comparison to the other projects. A few days later we received the notes from our teacher saying that we seemed to be somewhat unprepared, but our content was good, so she graciously gave us a B.
Ultimately, we failed because we lacked teamwork. Without communication and effort throughout the two weeks we had to prepare the project, we suffered as a team and so did our project. Rather than working as a team and bouncing ideas off of each other, critiquing each other’s work, and creating our final project, everyone focused on their own individual tasks and then one person compiled all of the results. The team turned into a group of individuals doing individual work rather than teamwork, and in that sense we did fail.

Although my group didn't fail the class, we did fail at working as a team. This failure taught me how I should approach working in a group and the best ways to communicate with other group members. This experience turned into a lesson which has better prepared me for my future group work in classes and ultimately in my career. With different challenges and struggles that face us, there are many opportunities for us to fail. What I have learned through my experiences is that it is not failure that defines us, but how we react to our failures.